


let it be tomorrow

by andromeda3116



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: (i.e. "fucking for the cause/cover"), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Dubious Consent, Dubious Morality, F/M, a whole whole whole lot of cursing, discussions of past-tense, mentions of suicide/suicidal ideation, mostly from jyn "a hundred pounds of pure rage distilled into a person" erso, of the sort that (lbr) is probably canon for cassian, our intrepid heroes being kinda unheroic in the pursuit of their goals, two very very competent people inadvertently making their jobs harder by being too good at them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-05
Updated: 2017-10-08
Packaged: 2018-12-24 02:00:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 26,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12002586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andromeda3116/pseuds/andromeda3116
Summary: When Saw left her behind, an old nightmare, the man in white, took his place; 80 hours of nonstop Imperial conditioning later, and to all appearances, the angry Partisan rebel Jyn Erso is replaced by a loyal, inoffensively-sweet young woman.Three and a half years later, leaks begin to trickle out of Coruscant, hints of high command secrets, either a spanner in the works or a deadly trap. Another eighteen months pass before the Alliance decides to pursue the leak, the potential payoff being too great not to risk it, and send their most experienced spy to find the source and turn the leak into a flood.And five years into the worst deep-cover operation she never wanted or prepared for, Jyn thinks,fucking finally.





	1. act one: like a star in chains

**Author's Note:**

> okay, my dudes. listen. this idea came to me long ago, i penned a thousand or so words of it and went "eh, too much effort" and moved on. but then the wifi at work went out and without my precious internet i would have actually had to, like, interact with other human beings on my thirty-minute-lunch-break-of-blessed-silence, but! i have google docs offline on my phone, so i went into it and looked back at some of the stuff lurking down there, stumbled across this, and was waylaid by a wild inspiration. and then a further, like, sixteen thousand words have happened, in that fervent "i can think of nothing else until i have this story out of my head" way that asshole plot bunnies sometimes do.
> 
> i gave krennic a non-canon adult son here, because many aspects of the story really worked better if jyn was married into the krennic family, but while orson krennic is a whole lot of gross things, "marrying galen's teenage daughter" is probably not among them. however, "marrying galen's teenage daughter off to his reasonably-age-appropriate son" is absolutely in-character for him, i feel.
> 
> the title is from the novel "feet of clay" and this chapter title is from "thud!", both by terry pratchett.

the dark, in the dark, _like a star in chains_

.

.

. 

_I can’t recommend Andor for this mission._

.

The leak had to come from _somewhere_ ; it was Cassian’s job, on this mission, to identify the source of the trickles of information seeping out of Coruscant, and, with any luck, turn the trickle into a flood.

They'd reliably traced it to the estate owned by some high-ranking Imperial director — in weapons development, as good a start as he could dream of — but they employed over a hundred servants in varying positions, held a full Death Trooper unit, and acted as a regular way station for practically every member of the Senate and most of the ranking officers in the Empire’s vast military.

It would not be easy, and in fact, had almost been deemed too high-risk, but the potential payoff was too enticing.

There were some places to start: anyone in the family had been tentatively ruled out, as being too loyal to the Empire (most having been involved with its inception), although he had made a note to look into people who had married in recently. Anyone without a reasonable way to access classified information had been ruled out — so probably not a cook, but possibly a maid, whose presence might go unnoticed, and even if it was, had an excuse to be almost anywhere — and the Death Troopers were presumably as programmed as every other Imperial unit, but someone might have been able to infiltrate them.

It would take someone with training to successfully infiltrate a unit of Death Troopers, but his preliminary screens had turned up nothing suspicious. Could be someone with a low profile; he wasn't going to rule it out, but he wasn't really expecting to find anything down that path, either.

The servants seemed to be the most likely place to find a secret rebel — one of many in uniform, could get into most places, usually went unnoticed — but he'd decided that he would have to get a good look at the security surrounding them before he could justify digging there.

So here he was, examining the estate from the top of the next building over while Kay hacked into their computer system.

It had been a last-minute decision to stop and wait a moment; in fact, he had spent the entire trip over creating a flawless profile of a cook from the Outer Rim. He was glad that he had waited, though it was a shame to waste the work.

It turned out that the hiring process for any servant in the household was rigorous and excruciating, and, anyway, there were no openings available. Moreover, if Kay’s running commentary on their system was any indication, they also kept a very close record of who their servants were, and had cameras on damn near every corner.

He'd be spotted in an instant if he tried to sneak in and fake it. Someone, in designing the security for the estate, had been both thorough and paranoid.

“I think it should be Captain Dane, after all,” he sighed to Kay over the comm. He wasn’t a fan of the Dane identity. “They seem to be planning a party.”

“Yes,” Kay replied. “It is a society event celebrating the new year, according to the invitations. An Imperial captain would blend in easily.”

“Start forging an invite,” he muttered. “I'll get the uniform and papers in order.”

.

Captain Bariss Dane was twenty-five years old, from the other side of Coruscant, had been deployed in the Mid Rim for some time in a boring, uneventful post near Takodana, but was here to represent his Major, who regretfully could not attend this event (because he had been dead for two standard years, but he still issued commands, wrote correspondence, and never went anywhere, thanks to a very well-timed and executed mission that Draven himself had run and kept up with). Dane was a stuffy, rules- and protocol-obsessed officer that wasn't well-liked but had a small reputation within the right circles for getting the job done.

He had documentation all the way down and all the way up, had put a not-insignificant percent of his life into crafting the mannerisms and accent, and had even — for a different job — forged family holos to sell the part. It was a _good_ cover, probably the most thorough and _goddamned maddeningly-complex_ he'd ever put together.

He hadn’t wanted to use it, not only because he didn’t particularly like playing this part, but also because if it got burned, he might stab someone. And this was the highest-risk mission he’d ever been on.

The welcoming party was held in an interior, top-floor courtyard, far from the the noise and the smell of the skylanes; it was richly decorated in some vaguely foreign style, the sort that rich people liked to emulate to make themselves seem austere, and the cameras were, he had to admit, exceptionally well-concealed.

He actually wasn’t certain that he’d identified all of them.

( _Very_ thorough, and _very_ paranoid.)

He introduced himself and passed his apologies along to the head of household — Director Orson Krennic, weapons development, an adult son whose name wasn’t offered but presumably he was supposed to know, and their wives. Both wives looked equally vapid, and made similar disappointed noises at the knowledge that the Major had been unable to attend, oh, was his family doing well, they were _such_ lovely people.

He made a mental note to figure out the younger Krennic’s name, and glanced again at the wives. The older one had a lot of blonde hair shot through with dignified gray, and carried herself like old money; the younger had dark auburn hair and green eyes, and must have been recently-married, because she seemed to be mimicking her mother-in-law in mannerisms and movements.

He made a second mental note to look her up, too. It was probably nothing, but someone in her position _would_ have easy access to the kind of intel they’d received, so he needed to rule her out.

Bariss Dane was one of the lowest-ranking people here (he considered the merits of calling in an airstrike right here and now, take out a good portion of the Imperial brass in one go, albeit himself, too, regrettably) and so very few people bothered to engage him in conversation once they’d spotted his rank. He’d spent over an hour in the place, and was just about to make an exit to do some new research — being a welcoming party, people weren’t expected to stay long, and he had been assured that on-site accommodations were available for all attendees of rank — when someone spoke to him.

“Are you enjoying the party, Captain?”

He turned; it was the younger wife, holding a half-empty glass of champagne and smiling brightly at him. He smiled back and bowed slightly.

“I am,” he replied, with a practiced Coruscanti accent. “The design of your courtyard is lovely.”

Her smile widened. “I wish I could take credit for it,” she sighed. “But that was Hayden’s mother. She has such a lovely eye for space and color, I think.”

Something about her struck him, a familiar feeling, but he couldn't identify it.

“She does,” he said, mentally cataloguing _Hayden Krennic_. “I see some Ambrian influence in the architecture.”

“I confess, architecture is not one of my skills,” she replied, with a small, melodic laugh. It almost —  _almost_ — sounded manufactured. But then, she was hosting a party. There were certain standards she was expected to uphold, whether she found small talk entertaining or not, so a false laugh only meant that he wasn’t being very witty.

Which, to be fair, he wasn't.

“I imagine you have a great many other talents, Lady Krennic,” he said gamely, and she glanced away with a small smile, like she knew she wasn’t supposed to be flattered, but was anyway. Or something. He wasn’t a scholar of Imperial high society nonverbal communication.

“You’re too kind, Captain,” she murmured. “You’ll be staying at the estate, I presume? There’s a room already made for you. Well,” she corrected herself, “the Major. But you’re more than welcome to use it.”

“I had hoped you would offer,” he replied, with what he felt was a winning smile. She returned it and gestured to a servant.

“Maximillian will show you to your room,” she said. “The Captain will be staying in Major Harrell’s quarters.”

“Yes, milady,” the servant replied, bowing low and indicating for Cassian to follow him.

“I hope to see you again, Captain Dane,” she said with a smile and a half-curtsy. Her glass, he noticed, somewhat belatedly, didn’t have any condensation, nor any lipstick on the rim; he filed the knowledge quietly away.

“You as well, Lady Krennic,” he replied, returning the curtsy with a lower bow.

“Please,” she said, placing a hand on his arm like they were old friends, “call me Jyn.”

.

They allowed him to bring Kay in without any fuss, but they did do a scan of his programming, which led to a hairy few seconds — he and Kay had worked hard to hide his nature from any scans, but this was the first real, thorough test it had been put to. He passed, though, and they were led into a room that Cassian, used to military cots and function before form, found exquisitely distasteful.

It was too big to be useful to anyone, and too ornate for any sensible taste. At least the mattress would be soft, but he knew himself too well to expect good sleep on a soft mattress; the only times he got to sleep in a real bed were on undercover missions, so he’d developed a reflex of insomnia to being in one.

“Get me what you can find on Jyn Krennic,” he finally told Kay in a low murmur, after checking for bugs and cameras, of which there were… none.

He'd expected at least a bug, but if there was one, it was made of some new and unknown material that neither his nor Kay’s meticulous scanners could pick out. They'd checked for everything, both plausible and implausible, but there was nothing but durasteel and insulating foam in the walls, nothing in the floors but more durasteel overlaid with hardwood, and nothing in the ceiling but plaster, more insulating foam, and the above room’s floor.

Why would a family as paranoid as this _not_ have bugged the rooms of all their guests?

It made _him_ paranoid, but unless they had somehow found a way to make insulation record noise, there really didn't appear to be anything.

It could have been the leak, but if that was the case, how had they identified him and removed the bug before he had gotten here? And if they knew who he was, why hadn't they made contact?

It was a couple of hours of exhaustive searching before he accepted the results of a thirty-second scan. And even then, they spoke quietly.

“We ruled out the family.”

“She's married in, not born,” he explained.

“Do you have reason to suspect her?” Kay challenged, and he bit his tongue; sometimes, he really regretted how argumentative and suspicious his droid was.

“Gut feeling,” he replied shortly.

“I'll be sure to include that in the report,” Kay said drily, and Cassian glared at him, but he appeared to be hacking into the system, so he let it drop. “She does have quite symmetrical features and large eyes,” he said, apropos of nothing, after a long moment.

“ _What?_ ”

“Traits which human men find desirable in human women.”

“Are you —” he cut himself off and glared, genuinely offended. “Have you _ever_ known me to get distracted by a pretty girl on a mission?”

(She'd been beautiful, true — but there had been nothing behind her eyes. No light, no sign of intelligence or personality. Maybe she hated these parties. Maybe she hated these people. Maybe she was simply empty of substance, spoiled beyond feeling. Or maybe there was something else hiding under there, something more than an Imperial trophy wife.)

(What the hell _was_ it? Something about her seemed familiar, but he was sure he'd never seen her before.)

“There is always a first time,” Kay answered. “Her file is complete,” he added, holding out the datapad where he'd uploaded it, and Cassian took it with barely-restrained hostility.

Her file _was_ complete: the daughter of an Imperial scientist by the name of Galen Erso, born in a prison on Vallit but she and her mother had been released on orders of no less than Orson Krennic himself. She had been raised on Coruscant, attended some boarding school on Alderaan following her mother’s death, from the ages of eight to sixteen, before returning home, where she had integrated herself into society, captured “the eye of Director Krennic’s son” — he noted the odd phrasing — and they had dated for a year and a half, had a two-year-long engagement, then married in a quiet ceremony a little more than a year ago.

It… looked like his own file, come to think of it — or rather, Bariss Dane’s. Quietly complete, with no strange gaps and nothing to invite questioning. All of the answers any security probe would look for.

The wedding holos were in it, and he examined them with more care than was probably warranted. She looked beautiful in an ornate dress, that same wide smile she'd worn at the party. Everyone looked normal, nothing at all out of place except for her vacant eyes. He couldn't even identify exactly what in her expression was striking him — it was _there_ , but it was so subtle, so hidden, that he almost wondered if he was imagining it. He narrowed his eyes, looking closer.

It hit him then, why the familiarity: it was the _smile_. It wasn't an absence of feeling or thought, it was a manufactured expression of pleasant nothingness. He had practiced that same smile in the mirror for years.

Maybe it meant something; most likely he was projecting.

She wasn’t a likely candidate — in fact, she was an actively _un_ likely one, since to all appearances, every shred of gossip he’d heard and been passed, every holoimage and every word and and every detail except his own perception of single smile, she was happily married to Orson Krennic’s son, sweet and inoffensive and deeply in love with (and loyal to) her Imperial husband. There was no _reason_ for her to be the leak, no motive, no hint of a rebel soul.

“Start compiling files on the servants,” he told Kay.

.

_Why not? He has an excellent track record, nearly a decade of experience, his judgment in the field has proven to be trustworthy. If anyone can survive this mission, it’s Captain Andor._

.

The Rebel spy owed a lot more than he knew to Jyn.

For one, the hacking. The system had alerted her to it immediately — but she’d been hoping that someone would come snooping, so she’d quickly and quietly covered it up without allowing any alarms to go off. It wasn’t that whoever hacked the system was bad, it was just that Hayden had designed their computer security with Jyn’s help, and it was foolproof. She’d had no opportunity to sabotage or slip in back doors — there was no untraceable way into the system, _period —_  but she _had_ been able to surreptitiously set it to alert her first in the event of unauthorized access.

It was a good thing, in retrospect, that the system was so perfect. She wouldn't have been looking closely if it hadn't alerted her, and to anyone not looking _very_ closely, Dane was absolutely legitimate.

She had spent the entire party hunting for someone out of place, and even she had initially written him off.

A lot of it was the uniform: complete and appropriate and fitted, meticulously clean and not a thread out of place, exactly as was expected of a captain. He'd even found or stolen the tiniest of pins and the most inconsequential of patches appropriate to formal party dress rather than everyday uniform or command attire — the Alliance was taking this seriously, it seemed, and had sent their best; even to Jyn's cynical eye, it was impressively thorough, and some elements of it _damn_ hard to fake or acquire.

But it wasn’t tailored to him. Anyone of any rank, commissioned or otherwise, had exquisitely-tailored uniforms, per the Grand Moff’s anal-retentive insistence, and his wasn’t tailored to him. It was the best she'd ever seen, but it wasn't _quite_ perfect.

There was also the accent. It _was_ perfect, but that was itself a problem. Only a native who was listening for it would catch on, but he’d _trained_ in that accent, not grown up with it. The vowels were too perfect, too sharp to be natural. And anyone who was actually from the H-46 sector would have had a lower accent, rougher on the edges. Impossible to identify from a rebel base, more impossible still to emulate without a contact from the area, and the Rebellion probably wasn’t long on Coruscant natives.

They’d done what they could, and done it well — well enough to fool her until she'd begun to suspect him — but not well enough.

Finally, he hadn't appeared to know Hayden’s name. It wasn’t common knowledge outside of this circle, and she knew — because Orson had made her ensure that it was so — that it wasn’t in any file, nor was it released on any channels anywhere outside of this sector of the city. It was a paranoid play, possible only because of the already-classified nature of their jobs, to sniff out this exact sort of spy: one who had been thorough in his research, but couldn’t have found the first name of the “younger Lord Krennic,” as everyone, including servants, insisted upon calling him. Not knowing Hayden’s name, in this crowd, was as good as a neon sign over his head saying _does not belong._

But all of that could be explained: the hacking hadn't been traced to a source, the uniform could be hand-waved with an apology for a recent illness, weight lost and not yet regained, the accent could simply be him using more formal tones for the formal party, and she didn't actually know that he hadn't known the name Hayden before she'd given it to him.

None of it _proved_ that Dane was the spy, and one wrong move would unravel all the work she'd put into this. In fact, some of those excuses almost seemed more plausible than the Alliance so successfully mimicking an Imperial captain.

She had sort of hoped that the Rebellion might have had a file on her, from _before_ , but either they'd never gathered intel on the Partisans or they hadn't recognized her as the same Jyn who was once Saw Gerrara’s best soldier.

It _had_ been five years, after all. She had gone through something like three nonstop days of Imperial conditioning before accepting that nobody was coming for her, and had made a decision that she sometimes regretted, to _survive_ , both physically and mentally. No one would recognize her now.

She threw out her lukewarm, untouched champagne. It had taken a lot of time and effort to entice the Rebel Alliance into sending someone here; nothing she had released before marrying Hayden and getting his codes had even caused a blip on their radars, apparently. They were nothing if not cautious, so catching their full attention required something worth their while.

And, in return for asylum or at least freedom, Jyn would deliver.

_Yeah_ , she thought, with no small amount of bitterness, _you’re all incredibly fucking welcome._

.

_That’s my problem, Senator. I don’t think anyone_ can _survive this mission._

.

The servants at this place lived better than Cassian, and not by a small amount.

It seemed odd, that a family so carelessly wealthy would treat their servants so well, with such nice quarters and a small, well-stocked medbay just for them and their own smallish kitchen with high-quality, real food, rather than his standard fare, protein packed into bars and the distant memory of a vegetable.

Odd, until he spoke to some of them — casual greetings, _sorry I think I got turned around —_  and discovered that their loyalty to the family was absolutely rock-solid, even if they cared nothing about the Empire.

“I've worked in some rough places,” a maid roughly his own age told him, as she showed him back to the guest wing. She was eyeing him up with little attempt at subtlety, and he made a mental note of it, in case he needed to get more information out of them; pillow talk sometimes turned out to produce a wealth of little details and clues that wouldn't otherwise be said. He'd rather not, if it was all the same, but it was always an option. “They've got a lot of strict rules, where you can go and when, what doors you leave out of, that kinda thing, but as long as you do what you're told, you get pretty much whatever you could want.”

“That seems rare,” he replied, and she nodded.

“Best place I've ever worked,” she said. “Everyone else says the same thing. Most powerful people couldn't give less of a damn about the staff, it's nice to be appreciated, you know?”

“I do,” he answered, smiling at her. He didn't plan to seduce anyone on this mission, but laying the groundwork could only help him. “I don't think even I get treated this well,” he added, with a small laugh, leaning forward with an exaggerated show of conspiratorial conversation. “Are you taking applications?”

She laughed like it was funny, which it wasn't, but she was mostly just responding to his flirtation. “I could put in a good word for you,” she replied, smirking, but in a lightly rather than _openly_ suggestive tone. Luckily, they had arrived back at the guest wing. “Well, here you are,” she said, still smiling. “But I wouldn't mind showing you around again.”

He winked at her, taking a hand and kissing the back of it. “Lydia, was it?” he said, and she nodded happily, delighted that he had remembered her name. “It was lovely to meet you. I should get lost more often.”

With a bow to her that was completely inappropriate for his rank but definitely enchanted her, he went back to his room and shed the personality. It sometimes disturbed him, how easily he could take on and put off those personas, charm a stranger into giving him everything then shrug them off like a coat.

He'd been doing this too long. It surprised him, in a distant sort of way, that he still had enough of a soul left to be disturbed.

“Well?” Kay asked, and he sighed.

“They are all loyal to the family,” he replied, taking a seat on the bed and rubbing his face. That was another thing about Dane that he didn't like: having to be clean-shaven. “None of the long-term workers would be turning on them. Find me the names of anyone hired within three months prior to the first leak.”

After all, he had considered going in as a servant; it made sense that an aspiring mole may have done the same, although who would have sent one if not his own division was a mystery. As far as he knew, the only rebel cell unaffiliated with the Alliance were the Partisans, and the word _subtle_ was not in their vocabulary.

His thoughts drifted, again, to empty green eyes and a manufactured smile.

There would be another party tonight, for little apparent reason other than the fact that half the guests for the main event had already arrived and they needed something to do with themselves. It was a strange sort of atmosphere: all of the structure of a four-day hedonistic bender for people who had significantly more credits than morals, with none of the actual debauchery.

Unless the high society of the Empire just collectively got off on small talk, “long live Emperor Palpatine, our salvation from the Republic”, and expensive wine. He wouldn't be surprised, but it _would_ be a uniquely disgusting experience.

_She_ would be there. He shouldn't speak to her again, because there wasn't anything there and it was risky to be too friendly with the host’s wife and court a jealous husband's scrutiny, but…

Cassian could admit it to himself, after a nearly-sleepless night of mulling it over, that he was suspicious of her because he _wanted_ it to be her. It wasn't just superficial attraction — as lovely as she was, he had seen and occasionally seduced more beautiful women — but it was that _familiarity_ , maybe-imagined.

He _wanted_ to be right, to be connected and familiar to someone, wanted the beautiful woman to have a rebel soul under there, that he could —

It was something he needed to get over, lest it cloud his judgment more than it already had.

.

An hour in, he was pretty sure that the party was a cover for some kind of meeting; in fact, he wasn't sure why it hadn't occurred to him earlier. The place was filled with officers from Imperial-controlled planets, as well as the military directors of several different departments, including Mining Operations, Strategic Development, Personnel Retention — the list went on, and made little sense at first glance, beyond maybe the family just inviting their friends over.

But it _did_ make sense if they were discussing the development of something big and secret. And one by one, they'd been slowly melting out of the party.

Unfortunately, the Dane identity was not nearly high-ranking enough to even get onto the floor, let alone into the room where these people would potentially be meeting. That meant subterfuge, but there was no indication whatsoever if there even was a meeting, let alone where it would be held.

His options… well, he _could_ ignore it altogether. It wasn't his mission, and wasn't likely to give him any clues to help with his mission, but there was the potential for serious intel here, and it wasn't in him to simply pass up opportunities like this without at least considering an attempt.

The cameras would prove a problem; he couldn't just follow someone, and he couldn't get Kay to hack into them and hide his presence, because there were too many people coming and going. There were also checkpoints all over, and keycard access to certain parts of the estate. Stealing a keycard wouldn't be hard, but it might tip someone off, and he doubted he could scramble the resources to reliably forge one.

It was probably too risky, unless his secret informant decided to show themselves and give him some secret passage.

But the potential payoff was huge.

Another idea occurred to him, as he looked toward the entrance, guarded by two security droids identical to his own. Of course they would have security droids at any important meeting room, all he had to do was lure one into his quarters, deactivate it, and send Kay in its place, and Kay could record the entire thing.

The only problem was that K2SO only _looked_ like a security droid; as soon as he spoke, he had all the subtlety of a hammer. Maybe Cassian could temporarily disable his vocal circuits. It wasn't like they'd be planning to ask questions, and vocal circuits on droids were notoriously fickle.

He was just mulling the details he would need to account for by drinks table, when Jy—the younger Krennic wife showed up at his side, face flushed, draining a glass of red wine.

“Oh, you simply _must_ dance with me, Captain,” she gushed, and, before he could protest, was dragging him by the hand on to the dance floor. “You look far too lonely!”

He managed to compose himself by the time they were in the center of the crowd, although he didn't bother to conceal his alarm. “I don't mean to steal you away from your husband,” he said haltingly, as she arranged his hands on her shoulder and hip. She waved it off.

“Oh, he's on the top floor with Orson and their posse,” she replied dismissively. “He won't be interrupting us,” she added, with a little smirk and a step closer, which was either flirting or mocking, he wasn't sure. He compartmentalized: in one corner if his head, he allowed himself to be attracted to her, but set it aside and focused on what was important.

Top floor — but present-tense. He had to get out of here and get Kaytoo in place before he missed too much. And now he was trapped on the dance floor with a woman he both wanted to know better and to never see again. Great.

The dance was some kind of waltz, very… handsy and close-up, and she appeared to be well on her way to gleefully drunk. Every time he tried to pull away, she would grab him again, tugging him to her, chest to chest and cheek to cheek, bright-eyed and breathless.

“My lady,” he tried, through clenched teeth, and she laughed, throwing an arm around his neck.

“Don't be so formal, darling!” she said, rolling her eyes on the word _formal_. “I've _told_ you, call me Jyn. You _are_ staying in my house, after all.”

“I am aware,” he replied, trying not to breathe too deeply. She smelled of some floral perfume, probably manufactured on Alderaan, of roses and red wine, and it was _intoxicating_.

She really was extraordinarily beautiful.

“Still,” he went on tightly, “It would be improper.”

“Oh, that's right,” she said cheekily, as though they were in on some secret. “You're the one who keeps everyone else on your base in-line, aren't you?” she teased, running her fingers through his hair in a way that bypassed his brain entirely, and went straight for the groin.

_There is always a first time,_ Kay had said, and it _pissed_ Cassian off, mostly at himself. She was an Imperial, a high-society wife, and he was _deluding_ himself if he thought she might be the leak, secretly a rebel, secretly a — an option. He had never been this distracted on a mission, and this was the worst possible one to be distracted on.

He _really_ needed to stay away from her.

He smiled thinly. “It is my job, after all,” he said, and she heaved a theatrical sigh, pulling him down a bit with her, and for a heart-stopping second, he thought she was going to kiss him, but instead, she finally released him, pushing away with an overdramatically haughty air.

“If you insist,” she sighed, fluttering away from him and back toward the drinks table, leaving him standing in the middle of the dance floor, like an idiot, absorbing the snickers and sidelong glances from the other dancers.

He stood there just long enough to make it look like he was embarrassed — gold excuse for leaving the room, thanks, _darling —_  before ducking his head and slipping out.

.

_Well, he_ will _have help. If the informant is real._

.

_Well_ , _fuck,_ Jyn thought, pouring water from a flask into her glass and filling the rest with the wine. Either the Rebellion had sent a _stupid_ spy, or she was wrong about Dane. He'd been totally oblivious to her attempts to let him “steal” a keycard to get into the meeting — even if he suspected nothing of her, after her comment about where her husband was, he should have been looking for an opportunity. Would have, if he’d been half the spy she had thought he was.

She looked around the dance floor, taking a deep drink of the weakened wine, and wondered who the hell else it could be.

Just to be sure, she checked the small — concealed-but-not-too-concealed — pocket in her dress, and… yeah, it was still there.

Totally fucking oblivious.

Dane wasn't at the party anymore, but if his file was right — and apparently it fucking was, she was livid, she'd been so _sure —_  she'd just humiliated him in public, and he didn't do well with public humiliation. No doubt he would want to get away.

She had really, really wanted it to be him, too.

In retrospect, he probably _was_ too good-looking to be a spy; the Alliance wouldn't send out someone with memorable features, and in this crowd, filled with pasty-skinned administrative types, he very much stood out. And he'd been good, nearly perfect, making her think that the Alliance was actually taking her seriously, had sent someone who could _actually_ get her out.

Maybe a servant? But in their own way, the servants were harder to infiltrate than the military, thanks to the rigid rules they lived by and the absolutely phenomenal conditions the Krennic family had them under in exchange for following those rules.

(That had been Jyn’s doing, when she had first been brought in to look at revamping the security four years ago. They hadn't been in bad conditions beforehand, but not particularly nice ones, and she had both felt bad for them and hoped to maybe ingratiate herself to someone who could help her. She had explained that servants in poor or middling conditions might be enticed to talk, for a new job or better arrangements, so the best way to ensure the loyalty of the staff, besides replacing them all with hackable droids, was to make sure that they were treated better here than they would ever be elsewhere. It had worked too well. She now didn't trust any of them to help her get out.)

It probably had to be another guest, but she recognized most of them, and the ones she didn’t had no apparent holes in their stories or acts, even ones as small as Dane’s had appeared to be.

Maybe a member of a guest’s attendants?

Fuck.

She’d already put a lot of effort into helping fucking _Dane_ out — hiding the hacking, removing the bug from his room, erasing security signatures for the KX droids because he had one which she _had thought_ was the actual culprit in the hacking and probably contained traceable information…

All for nothing. Because it wasn’t fucking Dane.

She pasted a sloppy, drunken smile onto her face and rejoined the party.

“Colonel Abraxas!” she trilled, taking the older gentleman’s hand and tugging him toward the dance floor; he followed, chortling at her bubbly cheer. “You look lonely over here, come dance with me!”

“You’re on quite the mission, aren’t you, Lady Krennic?” he asked indulgently, patronizingly, and, in the place in her head where Lady Krennic's laughing facade kept her hidden from view, Jyn Erso _howled_ with rage.

.

_I also doubt that the informant is real. I think it’s a trap. I don’t think we should send anyone, let alone my best agent._

.

“Ah, a bit of help?” he asked, gesturing at the security droid passing through the hall and indicating to his room. “I think I’ve found something in the locking system on this wing,” he went on, as it came closer. “You can tell if the system has been tampered with, right?”

“Correct,” it said. “If you have concerns about the integrity of the system, you should bring them up to one of the heads of household. Most complaints go through La—”

Cassian cut it off. “I don’t even know if it _is_ something to worry about,” he said, holding up his hands in supplication. “Don’t want to cause a panic if it’s just my paranoia.”

Once it was inside, Cassian shut the door and let Kay take over; he inserted one of his instruments into the back of the head to shut it down and glean all of its knowledge of the security and layout of the building. It was creepy to watch.

“Well?” he asked quietly, and Kay looked up, eye lights flickering, and for a second of pure panic, Cassian worried that the connection had backfired and reprogrammed _Kay_ , but then he straightened.

“K-7RO was not assigned to guard the meeting room on the top floor,” he said. “But it was assigned to prevent access to the floor.”

“Are the assigned droids already there?”

“No,” he replied. “The meeting is not to begin for another twenty minutes. All personnel have not yet arrived discreetly.”

“Get on the floor, then,” he said, walking around to the back and indicating to Kay to kneel down so he could reach the back of his head. “I’ll re-enable this when you get back,” he added, because he felt bad about disabling his droid’s speech functionality — but even Kay had agreed that it was the safest course of action. “Position yourself at the door, or if there’s a window, a vent — something where you will be able to record what is being said. Don’t leave a bug they might find, just record what you can. This is a secondary priority. If it looks like continuing might endanger the mission, leave or go back to following this one’s orders to the letter. Understood?”

Kay nodded, then helped Cassian drag the disabled droid away from the door.

“I’ll be waiting here,” he went on, but Kay held up a hand, paused, then tapped a message onto the datapad and held it out to be read:

_You will be less likely to attract suspicion if you return to the party._

He cringed, because that was true, but the party was also where _she_ was, drunk and flirting madly, which brought with it its own threats. But Kay was right, and it would make a significant difference, in the event of the security breach being discovered, if he had been accounted for at the party during the entire meeting.

_Dammit_ , he thought, but nodded.

“I’ll go back to the party,” he sighed. “If you get back before I do, erase this one’s memory and get rid of it.”

Kay tapped on the datapad again: _Destroy it?_

He thought about that for a moment, then shook his head. “No, disable its speech functionality manually, so it looks like a real short, then send it back out.”

Kay nodded, and left for the meeting. Cassian took a deep breath, and went back to the party.

.

To his eternal relief, she seemed to be avoiding him, if she even noticed that he had returned, and spent the next two hours going from group to group of the remaining officers, being a gracious and magnanimous host, topping off wineglasses and dancing with everyone at least once.

Unfortunately, he did not go _entirely_ ignored, and in fact, found himself roped into an awkward dance with the _older_ Krennic wife, who carried herself with haughty dignity as she allowed another officer to convince her to offer a dance to his poor friend, Captain Dane, who her daughter-in-law had so thoroughly embarrassed earlier. He couldn’t get out of refusing, although he did consider every possible way that he might, and so ended up in the crowd of people, occasionally catching sight of Jyn in the dancers, her laugh floating through the other voices like a sniper’s shot straight to his chest.

“I apologize for my daughter-in-law,” Lady Krennic said, giving a distasteful glance toward where she was. “She quite enjoys these parties, perhaps more than she ought. I assure you, she meant no disrespect.”

“I didn’t think she did,” he replied kindly, and with a bit of a sinking feeling —  _she quite enjoys these parties_. He had already known that he’d been projecting, but… hope was such a _bitch_ to kill. “She simply took me off-guard, I didn’t mean to be rude.”

Lady Krennic smiled thinly. “Jyn is still learning her way around married life,” she explained. “I gather that she had a bit of a wild youth on Alderaan, but my son seems to have tamed her well. Orson was quite delighted to see them come together.”

“Oh?” he asked, and Lady Krennic gave a little _hmm_.

“Her father is an old friend of Orson’s,” she said.

“They were childhood friends, then?” he suggested, in the interest of appearing occupied to any observer. Lady Krennic shook her head.

“I wouldn’t say friends,” she replied, with a tiny smile. “He pulled her pigtails and she kicked him in the shin. But when she returned from Alderaan, they kindled a true connection.”

“How romantic,” he forced himself to say, and was gratified to hear that it sounded convincing.

“Do you have a wife, Captain Dane?” she asked, and he shook his head with a wan smile.

“I haven’t the time,” he answered. “The Major keeps me quite busy, I’m afraid.”

“A good wife will make you _more_ time,” she told him. “But you’re young, yet.”

He smiled brightly, all too glad that the dance was ending; it had all left a particularly-bad taste in his mouth. He bowed to Lady Krennic and left the dance floor again, but just before he reached his post at the drinks table, he happened to glance up and meet Jyn’s eyes from across the room.

She looked disappointed, and for a moment, he thought perhaps upset, but it was too dark and she was too far away, and by the time she’d turned away to find another partner, he was convinced that he’d imagined it.

.

_That's a risk I'm afraid we're going to have to take. The leak has been traced to Weapons Development, Davits. It's an opportunity we cannot afford to pass up._

.

“So,” Jyn said, pulling the long gloves off of her hands and not looking back at her husband. “Anything interesting?”

Hayden sighed. “Just more dallying on the leak,” he replied, and Jyn froze, barely managing to catch herself and put on a face of confusion before turning.

“Leak?” she repeated, aghast. “There’s a leak?”

He nodded, brushing her hair back over her shoulder. “Nothing you should worry about, my love,” he said. “It doesn’t appear to be coming from within our household, although Father is investigating all personnel.”

She opened and closed her mouth in genuine surprise; was there someone else leaking information? She had covered her tracks well, it seemed unlikely that they had suddenly discovered her. They might have discovered the spy, though, if he had been stupid enough to try and transmit anything back to the Rebel base. “How — when did this start? How much is compromised?”

He shook his head. “Nothing major, it would seem. Hints, perhaps, but nothing of any real value,” he replied, waving a hand dismissively. Jyn doubted that Hayden was stupid enough to be truly unconcerned, but he was completely convinced that his wife was an emotionally-fragile flower and needed to be protected from the big, bad galaxy lest she become upset. She was reasonably sure that he put it down to the programming.

It probably wasn't the spy, but they hadn't traced the leak to her, which was a huge relief. Alternatively, there was another leak but they weren’t as high-up or as good as Jyn was, and so there really _wasn’t_ anything of value getting out from there.

And she couldn’t fucking ask, because they wouldn’t fucking tell her. Hayden thought she would worry herself sick and Orson wouldn’t trust her with it — the only reason he had trusted her with the security system was because she was just that much better than anyone else at getting through Imperial security; Partisan training had taught her where all the weaknesses were, and he had wanted that knowledge applied to his own household, to prevent any breach of classified information. Had she actually been programmed, it would have been a brilliant idea, but even so, she had found more success in setting herself as the administrator of the system than at putting any back doors in.

She'd have to go into the control room and check it out, but it was too late tonight. While she was there, she could probably trace the hack, if she still hadn't identified the spy by this time tomorrow.

Hayden planted a kiss on her shoulder, and she bit back a groan.

Ugh, _no_.

“Not tonight, darling,” she said, trailing onto an overlarge yawn that wasn't entirely faked. “It's late and I've had _such_ a long day.”

He hummed slightly into her shoulder. “I can't simply hold my wife?” he asked, and it was only long practice that kept her from going rigid as he slipped his arms around her. After a long moment, he spoke again. “Have you considered our conversation from a few weeks ago?”

Oh, _fuck_ no. “Conversation” was one way to put it. “Jyn pulling out all the stops to convince both him and her mother-in-law that she was in no way prepared to even think about having children, _ha-ha, I’m barely more than a child myself_ ,” was another.

“Hayden, we _have_ already discussed this,” she replied in a low voice, aiming for beseeching to cover up the desire to hit him. “I’m not ready. We’ve only been married a year, we’ve plenty of time.”

“I know,” he sighed, and launched into some soppy monologue about how he couldn’t wait to start a family with her, to meet the beautiful children they would have. It made Jyn want to vomit. It had been something of a premonition, perhaps, of how long this would take, that had led her to seek out long-term birth control shortly after Orson had made his plans to marry her to Hayden clear, and she thanked the stars every goddamned day for that.

She wasn’t opposed to children on principle, but she would, very literally, kill herself before she would birth Orson Krennic’s grandchild.

“Hayden,” she said soothingly, turning and placing a hand on either side of his face. “We have plenty of time,” she went on, kissing him quickly. “Let’s enjoy being a couple first.”

He let out a long breath and rested his forehead against hers. “I love you, Jyn,” he murmured.

She smiled, and, very kindly, replied, “I love you, too, Hayden.”

.

_I have… other concerns. About Andor._

.

So. Hmm.

According to what Kay had recorded, the meeting had begun with a discussion of whether or not Orson Krennic had identified the leak yet — he had been looking for a few weeks, it seemed, and had had little luck. But Cassian wasn’t sure if they were referring to the same leak that he was investigating, because they spoke of being relieved that more information had not been released; either they had caught less of the leak than the Alliance had received, the information that had been leaked wasn’t actually as valuable as the Alliance had thought, or there was someone else in the vast Weapons Development department that had been dropping hints.

Unless it was the second one, it wasn’t exactly his concern, except that it meant there would be greater scrutiny — that there _had already been_ greater scrutiny, and he had apparently not been discovered.

Which suggested that his informant had ties to security, and had been helping hide him. A guard? But a guard couldn’t access the kind of information they’d received.

But if his informant was hiding him, somehow knew who he was, why hadn’t they reached out to him?

He was missing something.

There wasn’t really anything else for it, at this point: he would have to find the control room and figure out who had been tampering with the system directly. That should give him a name, or at least a security signature, so he could finally make contact. But getting to the control room wouldn’t be easy; he would need to get Kay to find the guard schedules so that he could time it properly, and he would need to steal a system access card from somewhere, and he would just have to, well, sort of hope that no one was watching the cameras too closely.

He had really hoped on being able to identify the informant in some other way. The risk of this burning Dane was high.

The rest of the meeting had been updates on a major building project, which was apparently being stalled by some assholes in middle management and Partisan activity near Jedha, to everyone’s great irritation and Cassian’s dark satisfaction. It involved a lot of kyberite mining, but unfortunately didn’t give him any confirmation of anything he hadn’t already known.

The Empire _was_ building something big — that, at least he, personally, was sure of — but they had no hard evidence and absolutely no detail of it, beyond “it’ll be unstoppable,” and high command wasn’t sure that it wasn’t just Imperial posturing.

He had sort of hoped to find further information from the meeting, but in retrospect, it wasn’t likely for them to go around the table filling everyone in on things they already knew, like _Hello everyone, my name is Commodore Kortu and I’ve been working on —_

It was possible that they’d had some kind of visual aid or handout with details, but without a way into the meeting, he had no way of knowing.

Dammit. So far, this mission had only been a success in the sense that he hadn’t yet died on it.

“I need guard schedules for tomorrow evening,” he told Kay. “Particularly around the control room. As well as a list of what security measures I’ll have to get past to get into the system.”

“The guard schedule will be no trouble,” Kay replied. “There are varying levels of access into the control panels,” he went on. “Only the family has full access, but the head of the Trooper garrison and the head of security would both have cards with sufficient access to allow you to see who has been in the system and when within the past three days.”

“Great,” he muttered. “Any chance you can get the card off the head of security?”

Kay shook his head. “He keeps it attached to his person at all times.”

“So I have to kill him,” he sighed.

“Or steal a system access card from a member of the family,” he offered, and Cassian ran a hand over his face.

“Would the wives have that on them?” he asked, with some trepidation. “Those dresses don’t have anywhere to keep a card, do they?”

“Many dresses of the female members of Imperial high society _do_ contain concealed pockets for keeping small personal items. The systems access cards are not large.”

Even better. He had to steal a systems access card from one of the wives, which meant either subjecting himself to another awkward dance with the most stiff and boring woman in the galaxy, or take the risk of a dance with Jyn. It was much more likely that he would be able to get a card off Jyn, who was apparently a flirty drunk and wouldn’t be as opposed to him touching her.

It frustrated him, that he still wanted it to be her. She _would_ have total access, of the sort needed to hide him from the system, and she _would_ be able to get into the files and find the information. But there was no evidence that she ever did anything of the sort, and she hadn’t been acting suspicious or suggestive of anything beyond being unopposed to a tumble with a young Captain.

Moreover, if she had hidden him from the system, it would mean that she knew he was the spy, and she’d had plenty of opportunity to slip him a note or otherwise mention something to him to let on that she was the informant. The dance, for one, had been so up-close and personal, a perfect chance to give him a _meet me at X place_ note, but his pockets were all empty of any such thing.

He ran his hand over his face again, then through his hair. “I’ll get the access card,” he said. “You get me the guard schedules and any passwords I’ll need.”

“Already halfway done.”

.

Even if he had wanted to, Cassian couldn't _escape_ her at the New Year's party. It wasn't that she was acting the way she had at last night’s event, but she was simply _everywhere_ , talking to everyone, laughing brightly and sparkling in a slinky pink dress.

He waited for her to come around to him; it took a while, but about an hour before the shift change in the guard, she finally held out a hand to him.

“A dance, Captain?” she asked formally, but he thought there was a bit of a mischievous glint in her eyes. “Or are you still embarrassed from last night?”

“A bit,” he admitted, taking her hand. “Not enough, though.”

She smiled and led him onto the dance floor. “You really are far too formal, Captain,” she said, placing a hand on his shoulder and lightly brushing her fingers against his neck.

“I’ve found that formality helps keep me in line,” he replied, trying to focus on anything other than the soft sensation of her skin on his, both for his mission and his dignity.

“Oh?” she asked, smiling and allowing him to spin her away and then back to him; there was a quick moment of contact between his hand and her waist, and he felt the pocket: there was a thin card and something smaller with it. On the next spin, he slipped the card into his sleeve. “Do you sometimes struggle with staying in line?”

“On occasion,” he answered, just holding back enough to not be openly accused of trying to seduce her. 

“How interesting,” she mused, much too close to him. Her dress was _very_ thin. “The rules droid has a dark side.”

He laughed, more than the joke would have called for even if he had found it amusing. “I would hardly call it that, my lady,” he replied. “Perhaps a less stiff one.”

“Oh, no, I like this theory,” she went on impishly; for all that she smiled and flirted, none of it reached her eyes. “Dashing Captain Dane secretly breaks rules in his spare time,” she suggested. “Defiantly leaves his bed unmade to proper standards and, when he's feeling _really_ frisky, says a naughty word. I've got an eye on you.”

It might have been funny if he had been legitimate, but Cassian found it hard to laugh about his dark side, considering that it was usually more present than the other.

The best he could manage was a nervous laugh.

“I noticed you dancing with my mother-in-law last night,” she said, as though continuing a conversation. “Trying to get in with all the ladies, are you?”

He managed a slightly more-genuine-sounding laugh. “No, I’m afraid that was the fault of Lieutenant Colonel Drexel,” he explained. “He seemed to think that a dance with her would alleviate my discomfort.”

“It didn’t look like it did,” she replied, smirking. “I’m sure she told you that I’m a foolish girl.”

“Not at all,” he countered. “Although she did say that you had a wild youth on Alderaan.”

_Something_ in her face flickered, too quick to name. “Did she?” she said, on a breathless laugh. “I hope she didn’t give you many details,” she added, with an exaggerated cringe. “Some things are better left secret, I think.”

“Are they?” he asked gamely. “Too much wine, girlish exploits?” he suggested, just this side of open flirtation, and she laughed.

“Something like that,” she replied, with a wink that was _definitely_ open flirtation. “Most of what I learned there was, shall we say, more practical.”

“Oh?”

“Yes,” she said, like it was a juicy secret, again running one of her hands up the back of his neck and into his hair, smiling when his jaw clenched. “You wouldn’t _believe_ what a bunch of girls left alone can get up to when they learn the back ways out.”

“And here I was, thinking you were dignified,” he managed, and she laughed brightly.

“Oh, I can fool you,” she replied, trailing the hand not in his hair down his chest briefly, before pulling away and taking his hand, twirling around in what he realized belatedly was actually the next step in the dance. “Do you want to be fooled, Captain?” she asked in a low murmur, when she was again pressed against him. Her evening dress was cut so that, when she was flush with his chest like this, he could see the curve of her breast; he spared a glance down and then met her eyes again.

“I wouldn’t be dancing with you if I didn’t,” he answered, voice unwillingly husky and words unwillingly true.

It was definitely time to get out of here.

She seemed about to proposition him when he pulled away, and she tilted her head in confusion at the loss of contact.

“I apologize, Lady Krennic,” he said with a stiff bow.

“Cold feet?” she asked softly, raising an eyebrow, and he tried very hard not to look at anything but her face; her dress was clinging and nearly-sheer rose-pink satin, which left little to the imagination.

He _wanted_ her, wanted it to be her still. He wanted to get to the control room and find that it was her, because then he could return to this party and take her up on it.

He had suffered worse disappointments, but right now, he couldn’t remember any of them.

“It would be inappropriate,” he replied, backing away from her and returning to the drinks table; he checked the time — still a half-hour until he could even consider leaving — and opted to take a shot of vodka.

When he looked back toward the dance floor, she had gone.

.

_Oh?_

.

Jyn stalked through the hall, feeling exposed in the satin dress; it really must not have been Dane. He’d been flirting, and certainly taking advantage of the cut of her dress to get an eyeful, and she had thought that his comment about Alderaan had been a hint of some kind. Seducing him to get him alone, in her room where there weren’t any bugs and she could just fucking ask him outright if he was the spy then kill him if the answer was no, had been a bit of a long shot anyway, but —

She’d have to get into the control room and trace the hack herself. It wouldn’t be concealable later, and the system would then have records of the hack and where it had come from, but she was running out of time and she needed to contact the spy, regardless of whether or not it would burn their identity.

“Lady Krennic!” someone behind her called out, and she turned to see a young guard, fresh-faced and eager, running up to her. He paused when he reached her, trying to catch his breath.

“What is it?” she asked, affecting a concerned tone, and he held a datapad out to her.

“This just came through,” he gasped, and Jyn looked down at it, eyes widening. She blinked several times in surprise and mounting irritation at the fucking _runaround_ she’d been apparently-unnecessarily sent on over the past three days.

Well, fuck.

And fuck _him_ , too.

(As almost an afterthought, she checked her pocket — the data chip was there, but her access card was gone. When the fuck had he stolen it? So he _was_ an excellent spy, but apparently never even considered that she might have been the leak. Mother _fucker_.)

“You just received this?”

“Yes, milady.”

“Did you show this to anyone else?” she asked, reaching out a hand to help him straighten up. “Who else knows?”

“No, milady,” he replied. “I brought it straight to you, like you asked us to.”

“Walk with me,” she said, holding him by the elbow and guiding him through the halls. If he noticed her hands shaking, he would probably attribute it to the notice he’d just shown her, rather than — well. “This is — I can’t imagine how our security could have been breached without someone from the inside helping them,” she went on, playing worried and chewing on her lip.

“That’s what I was thinking,” he gushed, and she held out a hand to stop him, looking around. They had arrived, and a few quick taps on the datapad on the way had looped the camera feed of an empty hall. He was looking around, worried and excitable. “But who would —”

He didn’t see it coming, didn’t even know he was going to die before it happened; she struck like a snake, cracking his skull against the wall and shoving him into the garbage incinerator. It wasn't the best death — in fact, it was an awful one — but hopefully he had been knocked out and hadn't suffered.

Oh well. Forget the guard, this meant it was now zero hour; the control room was only a hall away and they were coming up on the shift change. Her mission had suddenly changed, but she still needed to get there, where she would be able to go a long way toward buying them some time. Even so, she could only stretch it so far before this began to bleed into other people’s pockets and datapads.

Her hands shook, now with anticipation.

It was _about fucking time_.

.

_The only agents I’ve ever had who have served as long as he has have killed themselves. I want a psych eval before I lose another one._

.

The control room shouldn’t be much farther, if his map of the building was correct, and it should be thinly guarded at the moment. He would be able to get in, find what he needed from the system, and be back out and at the party again within a half-hour, well before his absence would be noted.

He slowed as he walked through the last hall, which he had expected to be empty, but Jyn was standing, for no apparent reason, with her back against the wall, to all appearances engrossed in her datapad. Her eyes flickered up to him as he approached. “Lady Krennic,” he murmured tightly, nodding to her deferentially and refusing to stop.

“Captain Andor,” she replied, and it took a second to register because it was so completely unexpected that for a moment his brain literally didn’t hear it. He froze, and then cursed himself for freezing and giving himself away, but he didn’t show it, instead putting on an air of confusion.

“I’m sorry?” he said, pausing and turning slightly.

“Captain Cassian Andor,” she continued, articulating carefully, and the breath in his lungs turned to smoke. She pushed herself off the wall and walked closer, watching him with sharp eyes, the first time they'd looked alive since he’d met her, alive and _angry_ , with a fervent and burning need so powerful it took him off-guard almost more than her words. “Originally from the planet Fest, on the Outer Rim, but you’ve been a ghost since you were a child. A boogeyman in Imperial rumors, no details, no description. A total cypher.”

“I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he heard himself saying, but she raised an eyebrow and showed him her datapad, which had a notice, a warning — the search for the source of the leak had apparently led the Empire to one of his informants in this sector, they’d caught him and he’d _talked_ and it had been Bariss Dane whose name he’d offered, as a rebel spy.

Fuck.

Nothing else mattered anymore; he needed to launch into immediate damage control, salvage what he could and get the hell out of here before they caught him, too.

“How did you find my name?” he asked, dropping the accent, because he was going to be _completely_ fucked if the Empire had his real name, but —

“The Alliance may not have had files on the Partisans, but the Partisans certainly had files on the Alliance,” she replied on a sort of sigh, like she was savoring the moment. “The dangerous ones, at least. Saw has that the spy Cassian Andor has a merchant alias in the Corellian sector named Joreth Sward, and the Empire has images of both him and Bariss Dane, and what a coincidence, they’re twins.”

There was… a lot to unpack in that statement.

“So. You _are_ the leak,” he said, to buy time to — had she just implied that she was a _Partisan?_ What the hell would a Partisan be doing here? — and Saw Gerrara had files on him? That would need his immediate attention when he got back to —  _fuck_ , he would have to assume that this would burn Sward, too, and the Major.

_Fuck_.

“You didn't pick it up sooner? After I spoon-fed you Hayden’s name, and the location of the meeting?” she countered, snorting and tapping the datapad again. “You’ve been giving me a hell of a runaround,” she snapped darkly. “Was I not ever considered a possible candidate?” she went on. “Or were you just completely _fucking_ oblivious?” she challenged, with a measure of disgust in her tone, and he couldn’t identify the emotions warring for dominance in him right now. Frustration — both at himself and at her **—**  a tiny measure of relief, and a whole heaping dose of mounting panic.

“No, you were not a candidate,” he snapped back. “You’re Hayden Krennic’s wife, if I wanted to tell command it was you, I would need more than “she tried to fuck me on the dance floor”,” he went on, and even she looked a bit embarrassed. “If you knew I was the spy before, why didn’t you say so?”

She scowled at her datapad, and changed tack without answering. “I’ve erased all the physical evidence that you were here, but it won’t hold for long. We need to leave now.”

“ _We?_ That is not my mission,” he said. “I’m to establish —”

“An informant, yeah, I gathered,” she cut him off, with a dismissive sneer. “But I’m changing your mission. You’re getting me out of here with you, now. Look at it like this,” she went on, stepping closer again, catching him with her eyes, and… gods above, but she was _distracting_ , “Your identity has been burned. I could only keep this quiet for so long anyway, even if I stayed, but I am _not_ staying here. You're not getting an informant, no matter what you do. Either you take me with you, or I do something drastic. But if you play along with me, you get a prize.”

“What is something drastic?” he asked, wondering if she meant to kill herself, kill everyone in the building, or turn everything she had on him over to the Empire.

“Get me out of here and you don’t have to find out,” she replied, and, as if to sweeten the deal, held up a data chip, the other thing that had been in her pocket. “All of the information on weapons development I can access with Hayden’s codes,” she said quietly, and he froze, eyes widening and frustration melting away. “I've been copying it for over a year, they have no idea it's all compromised. Even the big one.”

_The_ weapon. Even if there was nothing of it on there, even if it was only confirmation of the thing’s _existence_ , it was worth more than his life by a long shot. But also all of the information on weapons development that the _son of the director_ could access? He’d spent the vast majority of his life in the Rebellion, and over a decade in Intelligence, and he probably hadn’t, in all those years combined, held a _tenth_ of the information on that thing.

He reached out to take the chip, but she snatched it away and made it disappear into her dress.

“You'll get it when we’re in hyperspace,” she said simply, and he scowled.

“I can’t take the daughter-in-law of the Imperial Director of Weapons Development back to the Rebel base,” he snapped with a disbelieving laugh, but she only shrugged, apparently completely unconcerned.

“So don’t,” she declared, fire in her eyes. “Drop me off on any bloody planet you like, just get me off this one.”

He hesitated; she was practically vibrating with vicious energy now, all trace of the vapid society wife gone. Everything about her looked and sounded different, all thrown into sharp relief by the raging fire in her eyes.

She was the best goddamned mole he'd ever seen.

He couldn't take his eyes off her.

“Why are you so determined to leave?” he asked, and she tilted her chin up in defiance.

“That's none of your business,” she answered coldly. “After —” she froze then, cutting herself off and looking down at her datapad, then cursing under her breath and grabbing him by the arm. “In here,” she hissed, shoving him through a door into an ornate bedroom. “ _Now_.”

“What —” he managed to say, before she was shutting the door behind them and shushing him with a hand motion, pulling something up on the datapad and cursing again.

“It's Hayden,” she snarled. “ _Goddammit_. He can't leave me alone for ten _fucking_ seconds?”

Cassian raised an eyebrow at the unfiltered venom in her tone. Jyn Kre— _Erso_ was apparently a hundred pounds of pure _fury_ , distilled into a human being.

“Who _are_ you?” he asked, and she glared at him. “A Partisan, I take it?”

In a dark tone she replied: “Once.”

“Saw sent spies to Coruscant?” he asked incredulously, and she sneered, looking bitter and — again, that _need_ , the desperation in her eyes as she met his. Something in him tightened and slipped and _sank_.

“No” she said, and in the one word, a whole galaxy of emotion.

Eight years in some nebulous boarding school, her file had said, then brought home to catch Orson Krennic’s son’s eye. Those eight years were apparently spent with the Partisans, but then why had Saw left her here? He almost asked, but then — from the tone and the bitterness, he doubted that she knew, either.

“Why would Krennic marry a Partisan off to his son?” he asked.

“Everyone breaks under programming, eventually, even Partisans,” she replied, and his insides went cold. “Supposedly, at least. Isn't that all _you_ do?” she asked, something between accusing and defensive. “Show people what they expect to see?”

Yeah, he thought distantly, holding her gaze and watching her fight to reign in her emotions, she was — something else, magnetic — a mirror of him, the same demons woven from different cloth.

She wrenched her eyes away from him and back to the datapad, to reality, doing something on it that he couldn't see.

“How did the Empire capture you?” he asked, softer, and she flinched, the brief glimpse of emotion shuttering out of her eyes.

“Is that really important right now?” she snapped, all business again. “We need a plan, Hayden will be here in less than a minute —”

She cut herself off, suddenly hesitating, and he practically felt it, the exact same solution going through both of their minds, eyes meeting again.

He made the first move, pulling her to him and running a hand through her hair to mess it up, aiming to appear interrupted, but she caught him and dragged him down into a searing kiss, and then with her, back onto the bed.

His nearly two decades of training and self-control were all that saved him.

This was about to go badly. Even considering that Jyn’s efforts and this ploy would buy him time before his identity was fully burned, he needed to get off this planet within the hour. The data chip in her concealed pocket — now underneath his wandering hand — was more valuable than either of their lives. The Rebellion was a lot thinner on resources and information than she could possibly know; he had to leave _now_ , and he had to leave with that chip.

(Her lips were soft but her hands rough, the intoxicating floral perfume an imprint onto his mind, her legs around his waist pulling him flush with her; her back arched to meet him as he turned his attention to her neck, a gasp on her lips, her fingers tightening in his hair and drawing an unwilling groan out of him. She was stunning and scorching underneath him, every nerve alight with the contact, and he could drown in her, couldn't _not_ , she was inexorable as gravity.

He memorized the moment.)

She was too focused, when the door opened, on the act.

She didn't notice when he slipped he data chip from her pocket to his sleeve.


	2. act two: for one day at a time

(we’ve both got too much to lose; sooner or later, I’ll have to leave him.)  
but for one day at a time, let it be tomorrow.

.

.

.

_Have you seen anything which makes you believe that Captain Andor is at risk?_

.

Jyn had not quite been prepared for Cassian.

She had _thought_ she was, thought she knew roughly what to expect, but when Dane had disappeared, the switch was absolute: gone was the perfect Coruscanti accent, the beseeching tone, the stiff and formal distance, all replaced by a challenging and calculating soldier who wasn't afraid to get into her personal space and give as good as he got.

At some point in the past five years, she had gotten used to subtlety and passive, sycophantic types like Hayden and, well, Captain Dane, and Cassian was anything but passive or sycophantic.

(And, unwillingly, the words _fuck me on the dance floor_ in his real voice — so different from Dane’s, everything about him was so different — echoed in the back of her head and down to the base of her spine.)

Hayden looked so shocked when he saw them that it almost made her feel bad.

“I — what —  _Jyn —_ ” he spluttered, and she made a bit of an exaggerated show of rearranging her dress, as Cassian (now back in-character) jumped and pulled away.

“This isn't what it —” he started, but Hayden cut him off.

“Oh, isn't it?” he snapped.

Jyn hadn't had the time to think this plan out before committing to it, but she was nothing if not adaptable. “Hayden, it's… nothing,” she slurred, going for wasted. “He's attractive, isn't he? You should just… join in.”

Cassian glanced back at her with a panicked expression that she wasn't sure was fake. But then, he couldn't know that Hayden would never take her up on the suggestion, and she couldn't imagine that he would respond well to being unexpectedly roped into a threesome while trying to flee the Empire.

“That's _disgusting_ ,” Hayden spat. “I can't believe this. _Get out of here!"_ he snarled at Cassian, who was already backing toward the door with wide eyes and both hands raised in supplication. He spared her only a glance, but mouthed _I'm sorry_ before ducking out. Jyn staggered up from the bed.

“That was rude,” she pouted, and Hayden made a noise of hurt disbelief.

“ _Rude?_ ” he repeated. “Of course I was _rude_ to the man trying to sleep with my wife!”

“It's just for fun,” she slurred, stumbling toward the mirror but being intercepted by her husband halfway there.

“This isn't fun, Jyn!” he cried, grabbing her by the arm and turning her to face him. “I can't believe you would do this! Has this happened before?”

She made a face at him, waving it off carelessly. “Of course not. You're always hovering. But you kept leaving me all alone, I got lonely.”

It was banthashit, and transparent banthashit, at that, but it gave her some time to think. If she could get to the dressing table, she could use the heavy silver hairbrush there to knock him out, then escape and regroup with Cassian, but Hayden wasn't giving her much opportunity to move.

“Jyn…” he started, through gritted teeth. “You know how important my work is to me.”

“Oh, I know,” she replied, laying on some bitterness to sell it. “It's all you really love.”

“I love _you!_ ” he countered, honestly sounding like he was on the verge of tears. There was a moment of silence, where he buried his face in his palm and she made another move toward the hairbrush. “How could you do this to me?” he choked, catching her again and turning her to face him.

“Oh, let it go already,” she snapped back, now not bothering to hide her irritation, and wrenched herself away from him again.

“Stop running away from me!” he yelled, hurt apparently spiking back into anger, but since she was at the dressing table now, she didn't care; she put on a show of smoothing her dress down and and glaring at her reflection so it wouldn't seem suspicious when she grabbed the brush —

And a jolt of horror lanced through her:

Her pocket was empty.

She could see it in her mind, when he'd been on top of her, one hand on the pillow beside her head, the other — the other on her waist.

 _I'm sorry_.

Andor had stolen the data chip. When she had been distracted by his mouth on her neck, the memory of his face when he'd looked at her and straight through her and she had thought he was on her side, he —

The room seemed to close in on her, Hayden’s voice turned to white noise. Andor’s identity was burned, and he had the chip with everything she'd worked for over a year to compile, and —

(He was a spy, a liar, and she had even _known_ it, _said_ it —  _isn't that all you do? Show people what they want to see? —_  and yet — she had wanted to see —)

It wasn't a long walk, from here to the hangar. At a brisk pace — but maybe she could still catch him, if she knocked Hayden out and ran.

She pulled up the security feed of the hangar on her datapad, to see his ship taxiing out into the sky.

He was gone.

Her only way out had gone, and taken with him her last hope.

.

_For one, I expected him to agree with me that this mission was too dangerous. It’s unlike him to accept such a risk with so little evidence that it has a payoff._

.

Kay was already at the hangar, after Cassian had commed him to get the ship ready to leave upon his arrival. His ship was already starting up. His identity was already burned — he’d be angry about that later — and he had to be long gone before that news spread, and it would spread quickly. The data chip was already in his hand. It was already too late for her.

_You're getting me out of here._

He couldn't banish her from his mind, the need in her eyes, the desperation. She had banked all of her hopes on him, _years_ of effort to get him sent here with something the Alliance would want; her last, most desperate attempt to escape, and it would all be for nothing.

 _Not nothing_ , he told himself. The data chip contained more information on the Imperial military than he could have put together in a whole lifetime. It would change the whole shape of the coming war.

_Not for nothing._

Except that all she had wanted, and all she had asked for in exchange for more intel than any of them could have imagined in their wildest dreams, was a ride to _anywhere_ else. He didn’t even have to take her back to the base. All she wanted in the entire galaxy was freedom from the Empire, and what had he sold his soul to, if not that sentiment?

_Saw sent spies to Coruscant? — No._

He paused at the ramp, and Kay looked back at him.

“We can't take off like that, you know,” he drawled.

Cassian closed his eyes; it was already too late for him.

“Kay, come here,” he snapped, walking up the ramp and handing over the data chip. Kay took it and stared at it for a moment, then looked at him. “Go back to Base One and get this data chip to the General.”

“Without you?”

“Yes, without me,” he replied, and was almost surprised to find the words easy to say, as he grabbed his bag with his own clothes, a spare blaster (not that it would help), and the cylinder he’d really hoped he wouldn’t have to use. “I will make my own way back, but this has to get to command as soon as possible. Go. Now.”

“I can't leave without —”

“ _This_ is priority one,” he said. “It doesn't matter what you have to do to get there, get this to command as fast as you can.”

“And then return for you?”

“No,” he answered grimly. “With any luck, I will be long gone from here before you could get back. And if I’m not, there won’t be anything to get.”

“I do not advise this action, Cassian,” he insisted, and honestly sounded worried. “Our odds of successfully escaping are, at this moment, very high. If I leave you behind —”

“The odds don’t matter,” he snapped. “Go.”

Kay finally relented, and Cassian left the ship and strode out of the hangar like nothing was wrong. He waited for a moment just inside the door, watching, until he saw the ship hit hyperspace.

And then he was alone.

.

_He has been following rumors of a major weapon in development. Perhaps he has heard more than he’s reported, which gives him reason to believe the leak is genuine._

.

She was stunned, the world seeming to fall away from her and heat pricking at her eyes, her breath catching in her throat without ever making it to her lungs; somehow, she had never considered that the Alliance would do this to her. That the spy —

— the spy whose presence she had concealed, the spy she’d _protected_ , the spy who would have been dead several times over if _anyone else_ had been the leak —

— the spy who had recognized something in her, what she had recognized in him, with that tender tone when he asked how the Empire had found her, the look on his face like he _cared —_

— would just take the chip and leave her. All she was asking for was a ride, in exchange for — for a _lot_ of information, solid information, the most…

She had not been asking much of him.

The disappointment was so thick she could taste it, salt and bile in the back of her throat.

Think, _think —_  if she was lucky, they would write this whole debacle off as Jyn’s programming beginning to fray and submit her for reconditioning, which would buy her time.

Maybe if she could —

“Look at me when I’m talking to you!” Hayden snarled, grabbing her by the arm and wrenching her around to face him.

She stumbled backwards and caught herself against the standing mirror, her hand going straight through it and her body following, hitting the wall beyond it hard on her left arm and side. On instinct, she clenched her fist and bounced back with a hard left hook, which sent shockwaves of pain up her arm; there was glass in her palm, now deeply-embedded. The punch didn't even land, which was probably a good thing, since it would have caused even more damage if it had.

Saw would have had her head for that kind of carelessness.

Saw had left her for dead.

And now so had the Alliance.

But Hayden looked horrified rather than angry, all of the righteous fury drained out as he realized he'd hurt her; the left hand was the worst of it, thanks mostly to her clenched fist, but there were several shallower cuts on her arm and a pretty bad one on her shoulder. It all hurt, a lot. She didn’t much care.

She was alone, again. Her last hope for escape had left her behind.

“Jyn, I — shit,” Hayden gasped, pulling her along with him toward the powder room, where a medkit was. “I didn’t mean — I’m so sorry, I —"

He’d never raised a hand to her before, probably knew in his soul that if he picked a fight with Jyn, he would lose, and badly, but even so… Hayden was so… _bland_ , so passive and obedient. He hadn’t meant to hurt her. He didn’t have the balls to try. Oh, he had anger in him, seeded by his father and cultivated by the Imperial military, but he didn’t have the guts to do anything with it.

Jyn loathed him; someone so weak-willed and spineless disgusted her on a fundamental level. He wasn’t even worth the energy to kill.

And — she was stuck with him, again.

 _Fuck_ , but she had had _hope_ , for a couple of days there, she had _really_ believed that her salvation had come to her, finally — finally, finally, _fucking finally —_  had answered her call.

“Let me see that,” he went on fervently, trying to make her sit down so he could pull the glass out of her shoulder and bandage it, but he didn’t much know what he was doing. In a distant sort of way, the part of her that had been a Partisan — and had dealt with similar injuries to this — recognized that he was going about it the wrong way, the amateur way.

He was inadvertently pushing the tiny, nearly-invisible shards deeper in; it hurt, all of it hurt, she knew that it hurt, but it was the way she’d felt the one time she’d been given some of Saw’s precious reserve of morphia for a particularly-bad injury. It was pain, it was there, it was intensifying, and it didn’t matter.

“Say something,” he pleaded, and she finally looked at him. He seemed distraught. “Please, Jyn, please, I —  _please_ say something.”

There wasn’t anything she could say to him, much less wanted to.

She wrenched her arm away from him and stalked into the fresher, to rinse the wound properly. He followed.

“Jyn, please —”

“ _Stop saying that_ ,” she snarled, without looking back at him.

“I’m sorry,” he pleaded. “I just — I love you, so much, and — I — seeing you with — with that man —”

Her jaw tightened. She had never been a heartless person, never enjoyed hurting people — but, _fuck_ , what about her persona could he _possibly_ love? She’d cultivated a character with absolutely no personality to speak of, using the excuse of the programming to save her from ever having to come up with anything more than “bubbly drunk” and “does everything asked of her”.

Come to think of it, that was probably it. He loved his obedient pet.

She couldn’t even muster up the emotion to hate him anymore.

Think, _think —_  Andor’s identity was still burned. They’d still find out that Dane had been a rebel spy, and they might find out that she had helped him hide from them. If they discovered or suspected that she had never been programmed at all, they would be able to react in at least some way to the knowledge or suspicion that everything had been compromised, and it would reduce the value of the data chip to the Alliance.

Part of her wanted that, a vicious and overall _hurt_ part of her wanted them to get nothing from her after all, but she had never hated anything more than she hated the Empire and, specifically, Orson Krennic, so ensuring the integrity of the data chip took precedence.

So — what she needed, right now, was to work out a way to convince them that she had only recently begun to wake up from the conditioning, and — after the spy was burned — had attempted to jump on him as a way out.

She had cleanly covered every track she’d made before the past few days, it — it could — it would work, if they didn’t dig too deep, it —

_Isn’t that all you do? Show people what they want to see?_

…why bother?

“It was an accident,” she heard herself saying. “I'm —” she couldn't make her tongue form either of the words _fine_ or _sorry,_ “— not going anywhere.”

.

_He has also exhibited increasingly-reckless behavior, and significant detachment over the past standard year. A spy whose only remaining friend is a droid is a ticking time bomb._

.

Cassian had survived in Intelligence as long as he had by consistently hedging every bet and planning for every eventuality. Over the years, he’d had to burn through several identities, killed a lot of people (some less deserving than others), occasionally resorted to seduction or blackmail (and in one case he tried to forget, both), but he always, _always_ had a backup plan, preferably three or four.

This mission had been special, and particularly high-risk, because the location and the depth of the security had rendered most of his fallback options unusable for one reason or another.

Which left him with only one recourse for survival in the event of mission failure, a panic switch of sorts, something he'd acquired years ago but never yet been desperate enough to use: a high-caliber EMP grenade, powerful enough to knock out every circuit for a kilometer in every direction, regardless of what precautions they had taken. The downsides were that it had to be set off manually, and if Kay hadn't gone, it would have fried him and, now, the all-important data chip. It would also take out every electrical lamp, blaster, radio, speeder, and ship in a kilometer radius, which was why this had remained his absolute last resort before the lullaby.

Using it would not only cut him off from all possible help, but would also leave him unarmed in the dark a kilometer away from any escape faster than a run.

It wasn’t much of a plan, but he had learned this lesson from his father, at such a young age he only remembered it in impression, not in words: _when all other options fail, cause as much chaos as possible._

Well, he’d sent his only other option off into the sky, so he was left with this: setting off a smoke bomb of pandemonium that would give him the cover and the time to get both he and Jyn far away before they could be traced. He hated relying on it, but it would _work_ , and particularly well on this mission: on Coruscant, glittering technological center of the Empire, the grenade would be downright _devastating_ for everything in the blast radius.

Chaos, he would get.

Jyn, trained by the Partisans (whose primary _modus operandi_ was chaos in as large a measure as possible), would definitely appreciate the strategy.

He cursed himself; this was stupid, he had been _out_ , free to go, and long before anyone would have guessed that he had ever been a threat. Draven had already been against this mission, calling it too dangerous — calling _him_ too wild a card, for reasons that everybody knew but refused to put into words, that it would have been too easy for him to commit suicide by stormtrooper like all the others had — and if he found out that Cassian had had the opportunity to escape from a high-risk mission scot-free with much more than he'd expected to find, but gave it up to go back for someone he no longer needed…

But what would he be worth, as a person, if he took everything she offered up as payment and then left her behind to die?

He had done it before.

He had done it a _lot_ of times before.

Only — he couldn’t forget the _need_ in her eyes. The desperation, the burned and stubborn hope, that familiarity that had struck him the first time he saw her and dug its claws in deep.

He could go back to the hangar still, change his mind, steal a new ship and leave this planet, never to return; back to his job and other missions in other systems with other damned souls, but he would never be able to leave that moment, where Jyn Erso had met his eyes and _known_ him.

Cassian could go ten thousand light-years away from where she was but he would never be able to leave her.

He ducked into a closet as close to the center of the estate as he could manage, and changed out of the stiff formal uniform; he tried, briefly, to stuff it into his bag because he had put entirely too much work into that thing to leave it behind, but settled for taking the unique and hard-to-find pins and patches off and stashing them in his bag. He felt lighter than he had in a long, long time.

He dropped to his knee and set off the grenade.

.

_You have a point. But the information we stand to gain from this mission — you’re the only one who doesn’t think there’s something very valuable worth investigating here. And if not Captain Andor, then who?_

.

Everything went very bright for a split-second — wherein _something_ ran through the air, like a static shock — then completely dark.

There was a moment of total silence and confusion before she realized.

That had been an electromagnetic pulse, and a strong one. Some fool had set off an EMP on site, five thousand levels above the Coruscant surface in a technological paradise of a building. A _powerful_ EMP, judging from the fact that even the emergency lights hadn't come on, powerful enough to blast straight through every failsafe designed to protect against them. That — that would cripple every ship in the hangar, every computer, every camera and recorder and droid and data pad and door lock and light and panel. Depending on the range, it might have even crippled other buildings, or dropped airspeeders out of the skylanes.

She’d heard of EMP bombs that powerful, even hunted for some when she worked with Saw, but had never been fortunate enough to come into possession of one. They were rare and expensive, and exceptionally hard to build.

Well.

That was _one_ way to make sure you weren't followed.

It was a good idea, considering that his identity had been burned, a drastic but foolproof way to ensure that he was _far_ gone before the warrant could have any effect on him, and… it may or may not have been his intent, but it _did_ give her an opening to escape on her own.

“What just happened?” Hayden asked, sounding horrified, and what little night vision she had thanks to the dim lighting had been shot in the flash, so she didn't see him standing up until he'd almost tripped over her.

“I don't know,” she lied, pouring fear into her voice and grasping his shirt. “Hayden, what’s going on?”

“I'm not sure,” he replied, taking her by the shoulders. “Wait here, I'll come back when I find out what's going on.”

He made an attempt to kiss her, but in the dark it landed on her cheek. She affected an air of panic before he got it together and decided to stick his tongue down her throat. “Hayden, I'm scared.”

“I know,” he soothed, smoothing down her hair and kissing the top of her head. “I'll be right back.”

She waited until the door closed behind him, although without the locking mechanism it just sort of bounced, before she started moving.

First: change of clothes. Even on the lower levels of Coruscant, a woman in a disheveled evening dress would call attention. She had nothing left from her Partisan days, except her mother’s kyber crystal necklace that she'd been able to keep and stash, but she did have more casual clothing, involving trousers, boots, a jacket, and a vaguely-functional shirt.

Getting a shirt on proved a problem, with her bandaged shoulder and free-bleeding hand — shit, there was still a pretty big piece of glass in there, and wrenching it out would make the bleeding worse. She settled for wrapping it with a scarf to soak up the blood and keep the glass in place, and gritting her teeth through the pain.

Second: a weapon, any weapon. Hayden had a blaster in here somewhere, and —

EMPs took out blasters, too. Fuck. It would only be good as a bludgeon.

On the other hand, it _would_ be good as a bludgeon, or at least better than anything else she could lay a hand on before he came back or someone tried to come running to her rescue. With one hand out of commission, she couldn't rely solely on her fists to get her out of here; she needed at least some kind of support, and unfortunately her bedroom was short on knives.

Shit, there really wasn't _any_ light coming in, it must have been _some_ pulse. How much of this sector had he disabled to get out of here?

 _All the better for me_.

Her plan wasn’t elegant: get out; beg, borrow, or steal a way off the planet; don’t look back. It would _really_ help if she could find a working weapon.

Jyn was fully dressed and had accepted her fate with the fried blaster when the door opened again; she cursed internally and went on the attack. This was beyond salvaging, the act was officially over. She didn't want to kill him and draw suspicion to herself, which might invite scrutiny into her conditioning, but this was the last chance she was ever going to get to escape, and she wasn’t going to have Hayden fuck it up for her again.

She went low, deadlegging him as hard as she could before he could see or hear her, and came around with the blaster, with enough force to crack the skull, right where his temple was supposed to be, but hit empty air. There was a complicated moment, made more complicated by the near-total darkness, before apparently-not-Hayden caught her from behind.

“It's me,” Cassian said, right at her ear.

.

_I… don’t know._

.

Jyn froze in his arms.

He _had_ expected her to attack someone coming at her in the dark, but he’d thought he would see or hear it coming; he’d hit the floor _hard_ on his knee before even realizing that she was there, and if he’d been a couple of inches taller, would have taken a possibly-fatal head wound.

That would have been ironic.

“What are you doing?” she asked quietly. There was a clatter, as she apparently dropped the blaster in surprise.

“Exactly what you asked me to do,” he snapped back, unable to hide some irritation. His knee _really fucking hurt_.

“What about the —” she started, voice oddly faint, as she stumbled away from him. In the gloom, he could just barely see her turning toward him, and only when she moved.

“I sent it on with my droid before setting off the grenade,” he said, trying to speed past that fact before she realized that he had sent their only escape away, and was now as trapped here as she was. “It’s gone, we need to get out of here.”

“You…” she started, but then seemed to catch herself and grabbed his hand, pulling him through the halls. “This way, it’s the fastest way out and down. How much do you have in the way of credits?”

“Doesn’t matter,” he replied in a low voice, pulling her close to him as nearly-invisible people barrelled past; she gasped sharply, as though he’d surprised her. The halls were beginning to fill with yells and panic. “Credit chips were ruined, too.”

“How powerful _was_ that bomb?”

“Grenade,” he corrected, a bit absently. “Kilometer blast radius. I’ve been holding onto it for five years.”

“A _kilometer?_ ” she repeated incredulously, and he nodded before he realized that she couldn’t see it. “Why waste that here?” she went on, and he didn’t look at her, wasn’t going to look at her, even if he could have seen her. “You were out, you didn’t have to go this far to get free.”

The truth —  _I did, if I wanted to get_ you _free —_  was on the tip of his tongue before he reconsidered. “Are you complaining?” he asked instead. He felt her pause, then shake her head. “Right or left?”

“Left,” she answered. “We’ll follow this wall to the servants’ stairs.”

“Where does that bring us out?”

“Near enough a portal,” she replied. “We can make it to Uscru from there. Have you ever been to Coruscant before?”

He hesitated; yes, and to Uscru, in fact, to the lower Opera House in the Entertainment District, which functioned as a sort of gateway to the Underworld, but it was on a mission he had put a lot of effort into scrubbing from his memory. At least anyone who had any reason to recognize him was dead, or wouldn’t dare acknowledge him.

“Once,” he admitted. “To Uscru.”

Maybe she heard something of it in his tone, maybe she was just more focused on getting through the crowd that was pushing in the opposite direction, to where they assumed people who knew what was going on would be, but she didn’t press the question any further.

(He had been… nineteen, was it? And the new diva had risen from poverty with a siren's voice and a fistful of Rebel names. She had been young, a year or two younger than him, young and afraid and striking out on her own for the first time, and she had melted like ice in his hands. He’d been too much a soldier to ever say as much to Draven, but he had always hoped he would never have to set foot on Coruscant again.)

He set his jaw, and compartmentalized.

“We need a better weapon than a dead blaster,” he murmured, staying close behind her. “The kitchens will have knives, yes?”

“Good idea,” she replied, and tugged him through an invisible hallway. It was quieter here, and in the distance was a small light near the floor. “They must have lit a stove,” Jyn said quietly, and cursed quietly, pausing.

“I’ll stay out here,” he said. “We shouldn’t both lose our night vision.”

She was quiet for a moment, before finally saying, in an almost-begrudging tone, “No. You should go.”

He looked hard at her in the gloom, but she didn’t appear to be looking at him, instead facing the little sliver of light. “Why?”

“They… know me. They’ll tell people I was here.”

He waited a moment to see if she was going to elaborate, and when she didn’t, he bit his tongue, and, in as measured a tone as he felt capable of, said, “Tell me the truth. Please.”

She took a deep breath, then let it out slowly.

“They’ll call for help if they see my arm,” she admitted, and it sounded like she was speaking through gritted teeth.

“What happened?” he asked, reaching out to touch her left wrist gingerly; it seemed to be wrapped in some kind of cloth, but even so, his fingers came back wet. “Jyn.”

“I hit the mirror,” she snapped, sounding more irritated than anything else, like being injured was a mild frustration akin to spilling caf on her shirt. “Went through it and hit the wall, too. Most of it isn’t bad, but there’s still glass in my hand.”

Cassian blinked, then cursed under his breath.

He kept a couple of bacta patches in his bag, but getting the glass out would prove to be a problem, and a messy one, and a _painful_ one, for her, regardless of how flippant she tried to be. He didn’t have any painkillers. They probably had a medkit in the kitchen, but they’d want to know why he needed it. And even if he got it, they didn’t have the time to be dressing wounds; it was probably why she hadn’t bothered to mention it before now.

He cursed again.

“Wait here,” he said, setting his bag down beside her leg.

He wasn’t in uniform anymore, but he also wasn’t wearing anything that would identify him as a rebel, so it would have to be sufficient. It didn’t have to hold up to scrutiny now, it just had to work long enough to get him a couple of knives. He shrugged on the character just before opening the door to the kitchens.

A knot of servants were sitting in a huddle near a stove, where they had lit a fire; it was an oddly primitive scene, a group of five or six humans crowded around a fire and looking up at him. A security droid at another door was slumped over, completely dead.

“Captain Dane!” a woman’s voice said, and the servant he’d spoken to the other day — Lydia, wasn't it? Or Laura? — stood up from the group. “Do you know what happened?”

He shook his head. “I have no idea. Rebel action is suspected, but all of our droids and blasters are dead. I don’t know about you,” he added, with a desperate laugh, “but I don’t like being unarmed in the dark when I might find the enemy around any corner.”

“You’re not the first with that idea,” the woman replied, but stood and rummaged around in a cupboard. “There’s not much left with any reach.”

 _Fuck_. Cassian really, really hoped that he didn’t run into any cleaver-wielding Imperials in between here and the edge of the blast radius; hand-to-hand combat wasn’t his specialty even when there was enough light to see his attacker coming, and with Jyn having only one good hand at the moment, it slashed their odds of getting out of here alive even further.

He should have considered that he wouldn’t have been the first to think of arming himself from the kitchens, and moreso, that he was much farther from them than the rest of the partygoers.

“Anything is better than nothing.”

She returned with a box and an apology. “I’ve got a carving knife set, some of them are pretty big,” she offered, wincing, and he took it with a grateful smile.

“It’s more than I had before,” he replied. “Stay safe in here, all right? I’ll bring these back to you when things settle down.”

She nodded a few times, her expression making it clear that she had read a suggestion in that sentence, as he shot her another fleeting smile and ducked back out of the kitchen and into the dark halls. It seemed much, much darker than it had before, even though the little fire hadn’t been very big or bright, and he only caught himself before running into Jyn because she spoke to him.

“What’s in the box?”

“Not much,” he muttered, handing it over to her. “We weren’t the first to think of this.”

“So if we want to carve pumpkins, we’re all set,” she said drily, and — her vision was better than his right now, so probably she would see it — he glared at her. “Actually, these _are_ pretty balanced,” she amended, and he caught the glint of the faint light on the edge of one of the blades. “They’ll throw well enough.”

“I hope that’s something you’re good at,” he replied, taking the box back and selecting the second-largest knife — it seemed that she had already poached the largest — to keep on-hand.

“It is,” she answered, matter-of-fact, and took his hand. “This way.”

.

_I’m afraid we’ve been left with little choice. I will see to it that he receives a psychiatric evaluation upon return from Coruscant._

.

In spite of everything — the pain radiating from her palm all the way up her arm, the danger and the darkness and the vulnerable position they were in, the fact that they still had to make it into the Underworld and find a way off the planet — Jyn felt almost giddy, vibrating with energy and excitement.

She was getting out tonight, or she was going to die trying. And for the very first time since Saw brought her out of that cave, someone had actually come through for her when she’d needed them to.

Someone had _finally_ come back to get her.

With all the locks and security disabled, getting out of the building was almost disturbingly easy, but while it was brighter outside where the distant glow of other districts was, visibility was still low, and there was a massive crowd of people — some partygoers who had fled the building entirely, a few people crowded around some crashed airspeeders, two overworked medics, and a whole lot of confused and angry and scared spectators from all over the district.

“Time to go,” Jyn muttered, tugging Cassian with her into the direction of the ventilation shaft that would lead to the lower levels.

On the way, she did the math in her head: the portal was about a little less than a kilometer away, but it was in the direction of the the Imperial Palace, which meant that they would be running right into trooper reinforcements. In a panic, most people looked to authority, and tended to muddle together rather than actively seek help; most likely, it would _be_ an authority who went for it. If Carrow, the Head of Security, had gone at a run, it would only take him ten minutes to get from the door to a working radio; even considering the time lost to confusion (which, considering his training, would not be much) and time to get from his post to the street, it wouldn't take him more than twenty-five minutes from the moment of the EMP to radio for help.

They'd already burned twenty. At a full sprint, Jyn could cover a kilometer in three minutes, and Cassian probably wasn't much slower, but that wasn't accounting for the crowd — they would have to be incognito, and wouldn't be able to clear the way with an authoritative bellow like Carrow could — or the twists and turns of the street. She knew the back ways, but getting to them through the crush of people would eat up at least five minutes, say ten to be safe, and it would be another five, three at a run, from the edge of the alleyways to the back side of the portal. Call it fifteen minutes on the outside, eight if they were absurdly lucky.

A garrison could deploy within the district almost at a moment’s notice; give them ten minutes to get from their posts to the streets. The nearest garrison outside the blast radius would only be a block or two away, since they were in the heart of the military complex, but they would be marching, not sprinting: give them maybe seven or eight minutes to reach the portal.

They would send a scouting party ahead, but that would be no more than three or four troopers. Assuming that Cassian was not completely inept at hand-to-hand combat and that they would have the benefit of surprise, it would take them maybe a minute to dispatch four troopers, less if she could wrestle a blaster off the first one she saw.

Ideally, assuming that no one had gone for help before Carrow, they would be reaching the portal a good fifteen minutes before the garrison, and possibly even before the scouting party. Realistically, they would be getting there maybe five or six minutes ahead of them. Waiting wasn't an option: they would be sure to shut down the portal and leave guards behind in case of, well, Jyn and Cassian. Jyn could _probably_ hotwire it to open back up, but not quickly enough. They _had_ to get there first.

She ran through it in a few seconds, but the conclusion was pretty undeniable: unless they were much, much luckier than Jyn had ever been, they would have a margin of error of maybe three minutes to get through the portal before they would be spotted and shot by the arriving reinforcements.

Okay.

 _Move_.

It took longer to get through the crowd than she'd anticipated, mainly because it was like a solid block of sentients, people crushed in so close together that if anybody spooked, people were going to get trampled to death. There was barely room to breathe, let alone shove through it to get to the feeder streets and alleyways; it cost time they didn’t have. She mentally rewrote their timeline and cringed. It would almost be easier to change tack entirely and make for a safer, more distant portal, but she wasn’t sure how safe _any_ shaft within walking distance would be.

Jyn was beginning to see why Cassian hadn't used that thing before now.

They made it out into the side street and began making significantly better time: Cassian was _fast_ , and disturbingly skilled at navigating narrow alleyways in the dark; at some point he even overtook her. In retrospect, it made sense that a spy would be really, _really_ good at getting the hell out of places they were suddenly not welcome in.

He made it out into a dimly-lit back street first, but immediately reversed direction and shoved her back into the alley and against the wall as the street lit up with laser fire.

“Shit,” they both said at the same time.

The scouting party, probably, but she doubted that Cassian had been able to get a good enough look in the split-second he’d been in their sights to tell how many there were.

“We know you’re there, rebel!” a tinny voice called out. “Send out your hostage and we’ll let you go!”

“Seriously?” she hissed. “Is _anyone_ that stupid?”

“Desperate, maybe,” Cassian replied thoughtfully, glancing in the direction of the scouts, but Jyn was too busy working on her hand to listen.

Hostage — that meant that Hayden had quickly discovered her absence and sent the warning with Carrow that the rebel spy had kidnapped his wife; well, he _had_ said he would be right back. But maybe his ceaseless hovering would work out in their favor, if it meant that the troopers wouldn’t shoot her on sight.

This was about to turn into a fight, but hopefully only against three or four combatants. The blaster bolts made it clear that there was more than one, but it had been too bright after too long in the dark for her to reliably guess how many shots had been fired. She wouldn’t be able to use her left hand anyway, but she wouldn’t be able to do much of _anything_ if she still had glass digging even deeper into her palm and shredding her nerves more than it already had.

She unwound the edge of the scarf and wrapped it around the glass, carefully.

“Do you —” he started, then seemed to notice what she was doing. “What are you —  _don’t —_ ”

The pain was _blinding_ , but at least it passed quickly from unbearable to merely agony, and by the time she stopped seeing stars, he was already hastily pulling her hand to him and placing something over the wound — a bacta patch. _Fuck_ , she could kiss him.

“How do you plan to use that hand?” he snapped, and she scowled, making an attempt to rewind the scarf around the patch to keep it in place, since it was honestly a bit too nasty for a single patch to contain, but he snatched it out of her shaking fingers and did it himself.

“I don’t,” she answered tightly. “But I don’t want it getting even worse than it already is.”

“You —” he began, but was drowned out.

“You have until the count of five!” the stormtrooper yelled, and Cassian cursed under his breath. “One!”

“Do you trust me?” he asked her, eyes locked onto hers, imploring. Jyn froze.

“Two!”

No — he was a spy, he had stolen the data chip; yes — he was Alliance, he had come back for her. No — she didn’t know him, didn’t know what he really planned or why he had come back; yes — she knew him like he was an old and favored book.

“Three!”

Both _yes_ and _no_ caught in her throat, and something in his expression flickered, but was shuttered too quickly to read.

“Four!”

“I’m bringing her out!” Cassian yelled back, shoving her roughly around so that he was holding her hands loosely behind her back. For a heart-stopping half-second, she thought he was serious, but —  _do you trust me?_

Obviously, if either of them just tried to run out and attack, they would be shot so full of blaster bolts that their corpses would glow. He could send her out, but then she would be alone against — oh, look —  _five_ stormtroopers, armed with a carving knife and down a hand. He wasn’t turning her in, he was getting the both of them into a better position to attack.

(So the answer to his question, she realized belatedly, was, in spite of warnings, _yes_.)

Behind her back, hidden from the stormtroopers’ view, she pulled the little carving knife out of her sleeve and held it by the blade. It was large for a carving knife but still small, and although it would throw with passing accuracy, the closer she was to her target when she threw it, the better. Her best option would be to aim for the leader’s throat, between the gorget and the chestplate, embed the blade in the notch of the sternum if she could manage it.

The throw was perfect, the blade hitting with enough force to go several inches deep, and although it wasn’t an instant kill, the trooper’s remaining life would measure in minutes even if she didn’t plan to shoot him as soon as she got her hands on a blaster.

She had to trust that Cassian would have her back, since the way the party was standing, she couldn’t keep all five of them in her sights. In the two or three seconds before they could begin to react, Jyn had already bull-rushed the stricken guard and the street lit up with laser fire behind her as she wrenched the blaster out of the dying guard’s hands.

Jyn shot him first and took out a second one — it appeared that Cassian was using one of the troopers as a human shield and was working on wrenching the blaster out of their limp hand. A fourth trooper was firing wildly at Cassian in an effort to prevent him from getting the blaster.

She took him out, then narrowly managed to hit the ground before the last remaining one — who had taken cover — could shoot her; the landing jarred her hand, and drew an unwilling yelp of pain out of her. The bolt went through the air right around where her leg would have been, which was either poor aim or evidence that they had explicit orders not to kill her.

Cassian shot that one as she scrambled back to her feet, then tossed aside the one he’d shielded himself with, and grabbed her by the arm to pull her along.

The whole fight had lasted less than a minute.

They still had a little time.

It was another couple of minutes before they reached the portal, a narrow ventilation shaft that was generally supposed to be navigated by speeder, but it was easy enough to climb down, if you were brave or desperate enough to take the risk.

But — she _couldn’t_ climb. Her left hand couldn’t hold weight.

A horrible sense of crushing dread settled in on her with the weight of a thousand atmospheres, and the unfairness of it made her sick to her stomach.

“So we climb?” Cassian asked, sounding out of breath as he peered into the depths of the shaft; in the distance, they could see light glinting off the coming garrison. Time was running out.

“That was — I had planned to, but —”

He looked at her for a second before dropping to a knee and rummaging through his bag, beckoning her closer without looking up once he’d found whatever he was looking for.

“Do you trust me now?” he said in a low voice, and she met his eyes.

“Yes,” she answered slowly.

With a small nod, he tossed her a pair of thick gloves, much too large for her, and began setting up what looked like a primitive rappel with a retractable cable and simple belay. She narrowed her eyes at him as he worked; he was favoring his left side and breathing heavily.

“You’re planning to abseil into a bottomless pit with a blaster shot in your side?” she hissed, and he paused, apparently biting his tongue, before shaking his head and glancing behind them, to where the white figures were getting closer.

“If you have a better idea, I’d love to hear it,” he countered in a low voice. She scowled.

With minutes to spare, there really wasn’t any other option, and — worse — there wasn’t any time for safety or caution on the way down. It was a goddamned miracle that they both made it in one piece.

He was still standing on the platform with a hand pressed to the wall, breathing heavily, when she landed beside him and tugged the cable off its anchor and down to them; she pushed him into the alcove leading to the large durasteel doors that usually would connect this level to the portal, but were sealed shut. She wasn’t sure if it was an automatic emergency measure, or if it had been done as a response to the EMP.

“Let me see that wound,” she said, and he glared at her. “Look, we need to stay hidden until they close the shaft up there, we might as well get a bloody patch on that before it gets infected.”

“In the bag,” he replied tightly, and she wrenched it open, not entirely sure what to expect inside it, but it was just standard, impersonal stuff — she noted the pins and patches from his uniform, and he had a blaster pistol and a signal booster that were both presumably dead, a couple of little one-off shots that she was pretty sure were stims, one small bacta patch and one large one. Nothing identifying, nothing sentimental. Even _Jyn_ had her mother’s necklace, but there was nothing at all in his bag that meant anything to anyone.

She wondered if _he_ meant anything to anyone, except as a useful tool.

It made her a little sad; he’d come back for her when he didn’t have to, a decision which had gotten him injured and might still get him killed, and it seemed that nobody would care if it did. Jyn knew what it was like to be someone else’s weapon, used and discarded, and to receive value and attention in direct proportion to your obedience.

She pulled out the large patch, hoping that it would be large enough, and pulled up his shirt to see the wound: it wasn’t the worst she’d ever seen, since it looked like he’d almost managed to avoid it and only gotten clipped, but although it wasn’t deep, it was long. She cringed.

“I’ve had worse,” he muttered, then fell silent as the garrison arrived above them and the portal echoed with the sound of clanking plastoid armor and spurts of orders being relayed. She covered what looked like the worst part of the wound with the patch and let her hand linger on his stomach while listening for any activity above them.

 _Let’s shut this down_ , one of the troopers said, and the gears made a painful grinding noise as the shaft was sealed, plunging them into near-darkness, with only the faint light of the working levels below them to see by. At least it meant that they were in the worst of the darkness now, and it would get lighter as they descended.

Cassian made a face as he looked down into the shaft, and said, “We will almost be to the Underworld before we leave the blast radius.”

“Uscru isn’t far horizontally,” she said. “We can pick someone’s pocket and get enough for a taxi to the Entertainment District. I know the way.”

If he hated everything about the thought of picking up the rope again, he didn’t let on, and they were able to get down to the edge of the blast radius without much in the way of trouble, although they were both drained by the time they reached the light.

Getting to the Entertainment District wasn’t the problem; it never was. On this level, all roads seemed to lead in that direction, since it was the only place that had anything approaching fun on this whole quadrant of the planet. The problem would be getting _out_ of it, because word had already filtered down that something had happened up in the five-thousands.

At first, it was all anyone around them was talking about —  _I heard it was rebels, how brazen can you get?, did they attack the Emperor?, the whole sector is dead and nobody knows who did it —_   but by the time they got into the red-light district, with the clubs and brothels and casinos to distract everyone, the rumors seemed to peter out.

She steered them toward a crowded club right about halfway between the Opera House and the spaceport, a favored hub of smugglers and hustlers and young people willing to be taken advantage of for a hit or a credit. Cassian seemed unwilling to follow her in, which she didn't fault him for.

“We want a way off the planet, this is where we’ll find it,” she murmured sourly, stepping through the doors and nearly recoiling from the familiarity.

She fucking _hated_ this place.

Only a few people seemed to notice them: the bartender and the bouncer, a wide-eyed young blonde waitress near the bar, a couple of Twi’leks at a nearby table. No apparent threats.

“Keep an eye,” Cassian said in a low voice, leaning in close to her and looking into the crowd. “I’m going to find us a way off this rock.”

“Right,” she muttered, and made her way toward the bar, where she could get a decent vantage point, keeping her bandaged hand stuffed into her coat pocket. Cassian looked, for all the world, like a man hunting for someone he’d promised to meet here.

The club was loud — some popular band was playing, upbeat electronic music with heavy bass that pounded in her head, and the lights were low, multicolored, throwing patterns on the walls like stars. It wasn't a particularly nice place, but the drinks were expensive and exotic, coming out with neon colors in fancy glassware; she watched as the bartender poured an electric blue cocktail into a wide glass with a salt rim, and added a splash of something poison-apple red that swirled into the liquid in long tendrils.

She'd been here before, once, when she'd discovered that she was to be married, and had been particularly desperate to find a way off the planet. A smuggler had bought her several of those garish drinks, his hand steadily climbing up her thigh, and actually seemed about to agree to give her a lift in exchange for certain favors, before Carrow had turned up looking for her. It had been the longest she'd been able to shake them, all of three hours.

The memory was so vivid that she could taste the drink in the back of her throat, saccharine and too-strong, like a candy apple soaked in vodka. It had been good then; now it was nauseating. Whether that was because of the memory of the smuggler or because of the fact that it hadn't even worked, she wasn't sure.

She was already on-edge, so when someone grabbed her by the arm, she almost body-slammed them.

“I'm sorry!” the blonde waitress cried, holding up both hands. Up close, she wasn't _that_ young, probably a few years older than Jyn, and she looked _terrified_. “I didn't mean to startle you.”

“Can I help you?” Jyn asked incredulously, a little unnerved by the way the woman's eyes darted around the room.

“Listen to me,” she said in a low, urgent voice, looking around nervously, “I don't know why you came in here with Darius, but you _need_ to get away from him. He's a murderer. He killed my friend Aayla seven years ago, you’re not safe.”

Jyn blinked; the heavy bass echoed in her skull.

It was an… odd feeling. Cassian _had_ said that he'd been here once — and to this district — and it had been in a tone that suggested he wanted to forget about it. She could hardly judge him for killing someone, but it still felt like a skeleton had just fallen out of his closet and onto her bed.

What purpose would he have had in killing a random woman in Uscru? Wrong place at the wrong time, maybe, like the guard she'd killed?

“If he killed your friend, why didn't you report him to the police?” she asked, sincerely concerned, because if the woman _had_ reported him and _had_ called the authorities upon recognizing him, this was about to get _incredibly_ messy. But fortune was, for once, on her side.

“He had… he could do a lot of damage, we couldn't bring that kind of attention to the theater,” the woman said, looking hunted and miserable. “He’s an _awful_ person. I know he seems nice and interested in you, but it's a front, he's a liar and a murderer, and you —” she cut herself off in a gasp, eyes widening as she looked at something beyond Jyn’s shoulder, and, before Jyn could press, hissed _please you have to get away_ , then bolted, moments before Cassian reappeared at her side, expression unreadable.

If he'd seen her, or recognized her, he wasn't letting on.

“Did you find us transport?” she asked, and he shrugged with too much carelessness to be sincere.

“I found a ship we can steal,” he replied under his breath, and motioned to a big man at the end of the bar, laughing gregariously and visibly drunk. “I got his activation cylinder, let’s go.”

“Right,” she said, and found it hard to stand up; the adrenaline was wearing off and both the pain and all the action from the escape were calling in their debts.

He made such a point of not looking in the direction that the woman had run off in that, coupled with his feigned nonchalance, made her certain that he _had_ recognized her. Once they had arrived on the man’s ship — a light freighter in a new Corellian model — she decided to ask.

“Who was Aayla?” she asked, and even from behind, she saw his flinch. “That woman said she was her friend, you killed her.”

“Does that offend you?” he challenged, turning to face her, his immediately-defensive tone jarring with how careless he’d been acting, and he gave a sort of desperate, mirthless laugh. “That I've killed people?”

“No,” she answered, eyes narrowing, “but it certainly seems to offend you.”

It had been a half-blind statement, but it struck the mark dead-on. He went entirely still, jaw clenched and eyes locked on hers; for a painful moment, he said nothing, then turned sharply and marched into the cockpit, where he began getting the ship ready to fly.

Jyn wasn't sure what she had expected — deflection, maybe, or a lie, or some simple and uncomplicated answer designed to make her stop asking — but total shut-down hadn't been it.

For a seasoned spy, he was awfully bothered by his ghosts.

“Where are we going?” she asked, but received no response, which she probably should have seen coming.

She bit back a sigh and sank into the copilot’s seat. It was stupid, to care about him beyond the fact that she currently needed him to get off-planet — any debt she owed him for his help was paid with the data chip, and he’d said outright that he couldn’t take her back to the base. It didn't matter who he was or what he’d done or why it still haunted him.

It wasn’t even just that she didn’t need him once they were somewhere else, it was that he was only ever going to be a passing figure in her life. They’d go their separate ways and that would be it.

And… then what? She’d spent so much of the past five years trying to get off of Coruscant that now, watching it fall away from her for good, she didn’t know what she really planned to do with herself. Find Saw? Even if he was still alive, all that would accomplish would be her yelling at him until her voice died. The Rebellion probably wouldn’t take her, at least not until the hunt for her died down, and all of her skills were woefully esoteric; it wasn’t like she could start a farm on some distant planet like Galen had tried to.

That was an option, maybe: to find Galen. But they would expect that of her, and… and she’d barely been able to look her father in the face since the wedding. He’d known it was wrong, he’d been miserable and trying to get through to her, but she’d lied even to him about being programmed because she didn’t trust him to help her. He’d gone with Krennic once, on Lah’mu, left Jyn behind and walked away with the man who killed Lyra, because at the bottom of everything else, brilliant and kind as he had always been, Galen Erso was a goddamned coward.

He’d _want_ to help her. She just didn’t think he _would_.

Cassian was her only ally, but he was only ever going to be a temporary one.

Still, she'd like to talk to him.

With a little grunt of annoyance, mostly at herself, she stood back up and stalked out of the cockpit to find a medkit, both for her hand and Cassian’s side. He half-turned as she left, but didn’t speak.

(Maybe he was thinking it too, that there was no point in conversation with someone who would leave his life forever tomorrow.)

She’d been searching for a few frustrating minutes when he finally joined her, but she didn’t look up at him until he spoke.

“The medkit is here,” he said quietly, and nodded toward a high compartment with a three-point lock, even as he opened it and pulled the kit out; it looked new, and fully-stocked, which was a relief. He seemed to be looking for something in particular. “We’ll stop at Brentaal and pick up a new ship.”

“Isn’t that a little close?” she asked, and he shrugged, not looking up from the medkit.

“It won’t take them long to track us and get a description of this ship out,” he replied. “The sooner we rid of it, the better. Come here,” he added, gesturing to the little bench, and when she didn’t move, he looked up. “You need stitches,” he said, as an explanation.

A bit tentatively, she joined him at the bench and let him take her hand. It wasn’t lost on her that he’d said _we_ twice, and made no mention of where he intended to leave her.

It also wasn’t lost on her that he hadn’t met her eyes since she’d made that comment about his history offending him.

.

If _he returns from Coruscant._

 .

Cassian was in completely uncharted space.

Her words —  _no, but it certainly seems to offend you —_  rattled around in his head and sucked the air out of his lungs. She wasn’t supposed to be able to _do_ that. He’d known her a handful of days, and actually known her as _himself_ for a handful of _hours_. Nobody should be able to do that, but especially not a near-stranger.

He wanted to tell her about Aayla, but he desperately didn’t want her to know.

He couldn’t take her back to Yavin IV; the Empire would be hunting for her, if not to get Orson Krennic’s daughter-in-law back, then to get _Jyn_ back and find out what she’d given the Rebellion. But that same fact meant that nowhere she went would be safe _except_ the Alliance, at least until the hunt died down.

He couldn’t take her back to base, and he couldn’t leave her behind. That had nothing to do with safety or value, and everything to do with the unfamiliar emotion that clawed at the back of his throat when he thought about leaving her on some distant planet and going back to Yavin alone.

The silence stretched, and _stretched_ , until finally it snapped and cut him open.

(It might have been easier to ignore, or at least lie about, if she'd pushed him for answers. But she didn't demand an explanation, or even appear to expect one — she had just… let the matter drop. Maybe he wanted to open up to her; maybe he wanted to make her hate him, leave him, so he didn’t have to leave her.)

“She was a rising diva at the Opera House,” he said quietly, and she didn’t reply but he didn’t look up at her to see what she might be thinking, instead focusing resolutely on finishing the stitching in her palm. “Born somewhere in the one-thousands, but she had talent, and she knew where to find rebel cells in the Underworld. After three of our agents were caught, Command sent me in to find out why.”

“It was her?” she suggested, and Cassian nodded.

“It took weeks to find proof,” he went on. “We knew the leak came from Uscru. I… found a lot of information along the way, not much use to us, but enough to open doors. The others, Aayla opened for me.”

He tried not to linger on it, hoped to imply it without actually having to say it. But Jyn prompted him anyway — “So, she was your lover?”

His jaw clenched all on its own. “She was Darius Jhoren’s lover, wanted to marry him,” he replied shortly. “I didn’t even like her.”

In some ways, he thought, that almost made it worse. She had loved him and he hadn’t cared for her at all, he had fucked her until he’d gotten what he needed, and then he had killed her. And he had thought, at the time, that at the very least — if nothing else, at least no one would ever know about it but him. Command neither needed nor wanted those kinds of details, he had no partners then, not even Kaytoo, and he hadn’t been in contact with any of their informants in the sector at any point in the mission. The only people who would know anything were a handful of others in and around the Opera House, and even then, they wouldn’t know much.

He'd learned other ways since then, different tricks, less cruel. But at the time, it had seemed the safest, easiest way to get the information, and he had been right: it _was_ safe, it _was_ easy. The hard part was when he had to look himself in the mirror after.

Her last words had been _these past weeks have been the happiest of my life_.

It had taken a long time to scrub them out of his skin.

“Well, at least she died happy,” Jyn said darkly, and he finally looked up at her, to find her staring at the floor. She didn’t appear disgusted or horrified or — if anything, she seemed bitter. It took a moment for her to say anything else, but it sounded reluctant when she did, as if maybe she felt like she owed him something in exchange for the answer. “Hayden wanted children,” she said, and he raised an eyebrow. “You asked why I was so determined to leave,” she added, as an explanation. “He wanted to start a beautiful family with me.”

She said it with an empty sort of disdain, and it twisted in his stomach.

“You're not the only one who’s used love as a tool, is what I mean,” she went on, still not looking at him.

“You didn’t care for him at all, did you?” he said, and she finally met his eyes.

“No,” she replied bluntly. “I didn't even like him.”

He watched her carefully for a moment, the set of her jaw and the simmering in her eyes like a fire banked. “What happens to him now?” he asked, and she shrugged.

“It depends on Orson,” she replied thoughtfully, “if he can convince the Emperor that I didn’t compromise anything. But…” she trailed off for a moment, then sighed. “They’ll be sure to find out that I helped you. Even if the Emperor believes whatever banthashit Orson comes up with, he’ll still demand reparations.”

“Execute his son?”

“I expect so,” she answered. “Rumor has it that he has ways of telling if people are lying,” she added, delicately taking her hand back from him and re-wrapping it with a clean bandage from the medkit. “So I doubt any of them will be allowed to live.”

“Does that bother you?” he asked, a bit incredulous at her tone, and for a moment she didn’t respond, instead pulling out a container of bacta salve, roughly jerking him forward and pulling the patch off his wound. He wondered if this was typical of her — aggressive healing, caustic kindness, it seemed to fit the woman who had expertly hidden him from the Empire and then mocked him over it — or if he’d pushed too far.

“I should have killed him myself,” she said finally, on a slow sigh. “The more I think… the Emperor will see to it that he dies slowly, in pain. I would have made it quick.”

“Why do you care if he suffers?” he murmured, tilting his head in confusion. “I thought you didn't even like him.”

“I hated him,” she replied, voice even. “But there’s no sense in cruelty. No one _deserves_ to die like that.” Abruptly, she looked up at him. “How did you kill Aayla?” she asked, and he blinked.

“Poison,” he admitted. “Not exactly painless,” he added, with a rueful half-smile, “but at least it was quick.”

“And it haunts you,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s been seven years, you’re a spy, you do this all the time —”

“Not like that,” he cut her off, with feeling. “I’ve crossed a lot of lines I shouldn’t have, left a lot of people to hang for the cause. But what I did to her wasn't necessary. It was only _simple_.”

She was quiet for almost too long, finishing up the bandaging and just… sitting, looking for a moment like a discarded doll, all made-up and dressed-up and tossed aside. The moment passed, and she stood back up, agitated.

“Why did you come back for me?” she asked quietly, and he managed to restrain a flinch.

“Would you rather I hadn't?” he challenged, and she made a noise of irritation in the back of her throat.

“Stop deflecting,” she snapped. “You just said you've left people behind before, lots of them. What's different about me?”

He almost laughed, because the question was so _absurd —_  what wasn't different about her, would be a better one — but no reply would come.

The truth was both the simplest and most complicated answer: he came back because he was so sick of being the person who didn't. But why her, why now, why it was _Jyn_ who had finally been the catalyst of that decision… he wasn't sure. It couldn't be pity — he'd left better people behind in worse situations; and it couldn't be for some greater good — he'd had the greater good _in his hand_ and sent it on before returning for her.

So why her? Maybe the insight, how she'd spotted him so quickly and seen through him like a pane of glass. Maybe the impressive cover she'd crafted and maintained without relief or support.

And the skill that had taken, the desperate survival instinct, the intelligence and the composure and a force of will so potent it could almost hold its own knife. That she'd spent five years as a deep-cover mole with no preparation or backup, married against her will to an Imperial, and still had enough of a conscience to feel guilty about her unwanted husband suffering unnecessarily because of her.

Because if she'd somehow kept a vice-grip on her soul after all she'd had to do to survive, maybe he could resurrect his.

The control panel beeped, indicating that they were nearing Brentaal, and he looked up at it.

He wondered where she planned to go from here; he hadn’t said anything about finding separate ships on Brentaal, and had no intentions of doing so unless she brought it up. And from there… getting back to base safely would require multiple stops and changeovers, plenty of opportunities for her to leave on her own.

She was free to go whenever she chose, and wherever she chose; that was the deal he hadn’t actually agreed to but had held up all the same.

.

_Have faith in him, Davits. Captain Andor is resilient, and dedicated to the cause. He will return._

.

Andor wouldn’t answer her _simple fucking question_ , and it was starting to grate on her nerves. Why should he care? Why _did_ he care? He had gotten what he needed, and he’d just openly admitted that he left people behind when they became more of a liability than an asset. So why come back for her?

She couldn’t quite pinpoint what about it riled her so badly — that he would deflect on this question yet answer her others, that he would be honest about his shady morality yet hide this, that _she didn’t know the answer_.

Jyn was still simmering as he brought them down in Cormand, the planet’s crowded capital city, but he didn’t suggest that she leave and she didn’t offer to find her own way out. Irritated as she was with him, he was still her only ally and she was still dangerously close to Corsucant.

After all, it was only a matter of time before word of her “kidnapping” caught up with them, and although disappearing in a population of something like sixty billion would be easy, the planet was still firmly in Imperial hands, so it was just foolish to abandon her only ally here, and…

Brentaal had a thriving black market, run by Hutts, who were willing to buy anything without asking too many questions, and Cassian — even with his jacket zipped up over his injury and looking as exhausted as she felt — could turn ridiculous amounts of charm on and off at will. He sold the stolen ship to a merchant in the back room of a Hutt-run cantina for more than Jyn had expected, spinning a winning tale about how he and his wife had decided to come to Brentaal after finding out that they would be parents, _yes thank you it’s still early but we’re very excited_ , and planned to use the credits to settle down and start up a peaceful life.

Jyn had very little energy left for charm, and she doubted that she could have come up with anything like his story, let alone sold it to merchants so well that they agreed to settle for a little more than they’d really wanted to pay.

“How much will another ship cost us?” she asked quietly as they left the cantina, linking arms with him and laying her head on his shoulder to speak privately, and come off like a young couple in love.

“Most of this,” he murmured against her hair, pretending to be kissing her on the head. “It may be best to buy passage to somewhere else first, though.”

“Ralltiir isn’t far,” she replied, and he nodded in apparent agreement. “Getting a new ship there won’t be difficult, and finding a smuggler to get us there shouldn’t be hard or expensive.”

The cantina had already been near the outskirts of the city, and although they’d made a show of walking in the direction of the residential district, Jyn steered them back toward the border once she was satisfied that they weren’t being followed.

“We should stop here,” she said, and he glanced at her, raising an eyebrow.

“It isn’t safe here,” he replied, looking around; there were fewer people this far from the city center, and the buildings were much older and poorer, but there were still Imperial outposts every few blocks. She shrugged.

“Safe hasn’t got anything to do with it,” she countered. “We’re dead on our feet, both injured, and I don’t know about you, but I’ve been awake for something like thirty-six standard hours. _Not_ stopping is more dangerous.”

“And sleep where?” he asked incredulously, glancing around the decrepit yet surely occupied buildings. “All of the hotels are looking for you, and the nearest safehouse is —”

“Three streets that way,” she cut him off, nodding even further toward the darkness beyond city limits, and neatly avoided an obvious solution to at least some of that —  _if we split up, you’ll be in the clear_. “You’re thinking _Alliance_ safehouses,” she added in a lower voice, pushing past him. “Partisan bunkers probably aren’t as comfortable, but they’ll do.”

They definitely wouldn’t be as comfortable, since Saw’s idea of comfort was being able to sleep with both eyes closed for four standard hours, but it would have sustenance of some form, a door that locked, weaponry, and at least one bed. And Partisan bunkers were notoriously hard to find; even among the Partisans, you had to already know where one was to find it, and — save perhaps (but _only_ perhaps) Saw himself —  _nobody_ knew where all of them were.

Jyn had never been to this one, but she and a few others had run a job in this system about eight years ago, and so they’d been given the locations of safehouses in the area, in case of emergency. Ultimately, the only time she’d ever actually set up in one of them had been the last time; in the back of her mind, the little questions she never actually asked herself but which always lingered in periphery, she wondered if she had held out for another day, another week, would —

She’d only been found because she’d gone looking for Saw, for _what had happened_ to Saw, what terrible thing had kept him from coming back.

When she was feeling charitable, she still wondered, but she rarely felt charitable anymore. Even if he’d gone back to find her and found her gone, he’d done nothing to help her. She wasn’t sure what was worse: that he had gone back and found out that she’d been taken and decided to leave her on Coruscant to rot, or that he had never even bothered to go back to the bunker at all.

“Here,” she said shortly, ducking into an abandoned, nondescript house and making for the basement. Cassian followed, face placid in such an absolute way that she couldn’t tell what he was thinking, which meant that it was something he didn’t want her to know. Either he was confused as hell or appalled at the conditions, were her best guesses.

In the basement, underneath a crate of dusty wine bottles, was a trapdoor, leading into the actual bunker.

It wasn’t much: a lamp that flickered to life without much prodding, a box of protein rations and vitamin supplements next to an ancient medkit, a lot of knives and a few cheap blasters, one gray cot already set up and another two bedrolls set neatly aside. Whoever had last used it had apparently intended to come back, but hadn’t.

There was a door to what was presumably a fresher, although it was probably not in the best of shape, and if there was a shower in there, she wasn’t entirely sure that it wouldn’t just cough dust out on them if they tried to turn it on.

“Not exactly what you’ve become used to,” Cassian said mildly, and she narrowed her eyes at him.

“At least it’s secure,” she muttered, pulling the crate back into place before shutting and barring the door. “‘Course, you stay in it for more than three days and you start to lose your mind,” she added darkly, and he didn’t respond, merely watched her carefully for a moment before unceremoniously stripping the cot and replacing the thin and dirty mattress with one of the bedrolls.

She cast an eye over the weapons: the blasters were old, but they probably worked, since it looked like they’d been modified from here to the wild space and back, but the knife collection — two machetes, an expensive-looking vibroblade, a half-empty set of throwing daggers, and the sheath for what looked like a ghurka, alongside a conspicuous amount of empty space — spoke of someone who had favored edged weapons, and taken several with them.

“How long were you left in one of these?” Cassian asked abruptly, and she turned sharply back to him, but he wasn’t facing her at all, instead kneeling by the cot and determinedly lashing the bedroll to the frame.

Jyn blinked.

“Define “left”,” she growled, and he paused, then turned around and sat, looking casual and relaxed, against the edge of the cot.

“How long did you wait for your comrades to come back for you before you went looking?” he said, and she clenched her jaw.

It was the sort of thing a trained Intelligence officer would have been able to guess and parse out, and even if he hadn’t been sure of it before, her reaction had probably been all the proof he needed.

“Four days,” she answered, tilting her chin up in defiance. “With a blaster and a knife, Saw said he’d come back and then he didn’t. As far as I know, he’s dead.”

“He’s not.”

The flinch was automatic, and his eyes narrowed.

“Who is Saw?” he asked, and she stared at him blankly for a moment. “To you,” he clarified.

“Saw is the leader of the Partisans,” she replied woodenly. “I was a Partisan.”

He watched her quietly in that same calculating way that made her feel entirely exposed. “Then why does it bother you to hear that he is not dead?” he asked, tone mild, but somehow seeming to loom over her even though he was on the floor. “Surely if he was only your leader, you would be relieved.”

She didn't respond, although he probably had earned a bit of transparency from her after opening up about the diva. Instead she fell silent, turning away and arranging the weapons on the table with no real purpose except something to do with her hands.

Finally, after what felt like an eternity, after he had already appeared to give up on an answer and turned back to what he was doing, she asked, “So what now?”

He let out a long breath, but she didn't look at him and she doubted that he had turned back to look at her. “Nowhere is safe for you,” he answered quietly, which was true, even if it was more blunt than she'd wanted to think. “Although you would be safest with the Alliance.”

It was said without inflection; she wondered what emotion he was hiding behind the neutral tone.

“Hmm,” she said, trying to organize her thoughts.

Cassian was right, but — what future would that be? Back to fighting the war like she had with the Partisans? Or maybe being drafted into Intelligence because of her insider knowledge of the upper echelons of Imperial society? Putting off an inevitable early death, striking back at the Empire?

He was right, but Jyn had paid her dues with the data chip.

“Don't you want any of it _back?_ ” she croaked slowly, deliberately, and he made a noise of confusion. “We’ve spent our whole lives giving up everything for the cause, don't you think maybe it owes us something in return?”

“Bringing down the Empire isn't enough?” he countered, but without heat. It sounded, more than anything, like he was rephrasing his own mantra.

She hesitated, clenching her jaw tighter and tighter, before turning sharply to face him. “Do _you_ think it’s enough?” she cried, hands shaking, and the expression on his face was something hollowed-out, yearning. “Does it _feel_ like enough? What _haven’t_ you sacrificed for the cause yet? Your life? How long do you think it’ll be before you have to pay that, too?”

“Not much longer, I think,” he admitted, with a bitter twist to the lips that couldn’t be called a smile. “I’ve been doing this too long,” he went on, shaking his head slowly. “I could never leave the Rebellion.”

She wanted to shout at him, shake him, scream at him — that she didn’t ask him to, that it wasn’t fair, that this was no way to live and an even worse way to die, to just bleed themselves out and get tossed-aside once the war was done with them. But at the same time, he wasn’t wrong. Jyn was born in an Imperial prison, came of age throwing bombs into stormtrooper barracks, spent the last five years undercover, patiently collecting information that would hopefully bring down Krennic’s entire department, if not seed the defeat of the Empire itself.

There wasn’t anything else _for_ her, except to fight this war. There wasn’t an _after_ , a happy future with a kid or two on some pretty green planet.

Jyn — and Cassian, too, probably — was destined to end up as a struck-out name in a database, K-I-A.

But if there wasn’t an _after_ , at least there was a _now_.

“All right,” she said, voice coming out unnaturally high and breathy. “Okay. Don’t.”

“Jyn…” he started, finally standing and taking an uncertain step toward her. She swallowed hard, and the urge to not be left alone _again_ was so powerful that it almost choked her.

“You don’t have to go _straight_ back, do you?” she said, all in a rush.

He paused, looking surprised, then laughed, just a bit and not exactly in amusement. “You're suggesting a _vacation?_ ” he asked incredulously, and she shrugged.

“Sure,” she snapped, and the bitter levity faded from his face. “Shore leave, everybody needs it sometimes, don’t they? We’ve been doing this for bloody long enough, I think.”

It would just be putting off the inevitable, but what in her life _hadn’t_ been? 

She didn’t realize how close he had gotten to her until his fingertips brushed against her cheek, and she finally looked up to meet his eyes — sad, restrained, longing — as he searched her face for something.

“I have never taken leave off-base,” he admitted, and she tilted her head. “I have never had anything but the Rebellion.”

“So you’ve never done anything for yourself?” she asked softly. “It’s just the cause, just the dream? Is there anything you _want?_ ”

“Yes,” he answered, matching her volume, and Jyn took a step closer, almost-unconsciously reaching out and placing a hand on his chest; his heart was beating fast. "You," he admitted.

She curled her fingers into a fist, clutching his shirt tightly and, after a moment of hesitation, pulled him down into a kiss.

.

_I wonder how much of him will._

.

"Stay with me until tomorrow," he murmured against her shoulder, fingers tracing patterns on her hand in the darkness; he didn't know how to form the words he was looking for, something to make her understand that he couldn't be the one to leave, this time, he couldn't leave her. Jyn was quiet for so long that he was starting to think that she had fallen asleep, but then she spoke, very softly, almost to the room instead of to him:

"How long until tomorrow?" she asked. "At least one more day?"

Cassian pulled her tighter against him in response.


End file.
